George Soros

George Soros was born George Schwartz in Budapest, Hungary during the summer of 1930. As a young boy, George immigrated with his family to England to flee the rise of Hitler. Georges father changed the family name to Soros at that time in an effort to blend in with his new home. His father had been a prisoner of war during World War 1 before escaping to become a lawyer in England. The experiences of Georges childhood had a big influence on his later views. After successfully immigrating, he eventually attended the London School of Economics where he later graduated with a bachelor of science or BS in Philosophy.

After graduating George moved to New York and began working in finance. Working for others was unfulfilling to him so he started Soros Management Fund(SMF). SMF is a hedge fund that has become one of the most successful in the world. It has managed to help boost Soros's wealth to a mind-melting $26 billion and then some. He has been an active philanthropist since and has donated over $8 billion to charitable causes.

As a politically motivated billionaire, Soros is poised to make mole-hills out of mountains in the fight to decriminalize cannabis. He has even written a few pieces for the Wall Street Journal including an op-ed in 2010 about cannabis legalization. In it he declares that the drug war resulted "in extensive costs and negative consequences" and says that "Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good".

George knows that "the racial inequities that are part and parcel of marijuana enforcement policies cannot be ignored." and has plenty of evidence to back up his claims. As a parent and grandparent, he believes in investing in effective education rather than arrest and incarceration. He has also voted repeatedly to getting cannabis off the black market and into regulated commerce in his own state of California.

Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III was born in October of 1955 in Washington State. He grew up in his birth town of Seattle and by the age of 13 was enrolled in the private Lakeside school where he blossomed as a student and came into contact with his first computer terminal. He spent endless hours over the years with the device, writing code and exploring new horizons. Besides introducing him to computers, Lakeside connected him to Paul Allen who he would later start Microsoft with.

He went on to attend Harvard after scoring a 1590 out of a possible 1600 on his SAT's. During his time there, Gates focused more on the computer lab than he did on classes. He eventually dropped out of Harvard to pursue his business dreams in 1975.

Microsoft started out as just Bill and his friend Paul Allen and their initial software package was a program they had written for an Altair computer system. They called the software BASIC and even though it was popular and Microsoft was receiving royalties, it wasn't enough to cover expenses. He eventually developed MS-Dos for IBM and by 1981, with company profits hitting the $16 million mark, incorporated the company.

Later software releases of Windows and eventually their successful console line called X-Box helped Microsoft become one of the most profitable companies in the world.

In 2012 Bill told Buzzfeed that he had voted yes to legalize cannabis in Washington but refused to admit to consuming himself even though he had alluded to having done so in the 1990s. Microsoft has even announced that it will be teaming up with Kind Financial, a Los-Angeles based start-up founded in 2013. Kind’s mission is to make it easier for marijuana related businesses to make safe and secure transactions without breaking the law. In 2014 Bill stepped down as chairman and has pursued his philanthropic goals since.

David Koch

The son of an engineer turned successful businessman, David Koch was born in 1940 which was the same year his father founded Koch Industries. In 1962, David graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemical engineering and completed his masters only a year later. He then went to work for his father's company in 1970 under his older brother Charles as a technical-services manager.

As of 2010 and after a series of lawsuits concerning ownership, David owns 42% of Koch Industries which is the second largest privately owned business in America.

David has flexed his muscles politically and even became the Libertarians Vice Presidential pick for the 1980 US election. His platforms most notable position points were stripping social safety nets like social security along with minimum wage laws and abolishing the Federal Reserve. He actually received 1% of the total vote which is the best showing the Libertarian Party has put forth to this point in time.

As a primary financial backer of the Tea Party, D. Koch has established a family funded political party that has managed to embed itself into the American political system. The Tea Party has been behind big governmental displays like in 2013 when their refusal to sign the Farm Bill almost resulted in the US defaulting on its debts for the first time ever. Senator Ted Cruz read the children's book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss on the senate floor during a filibuster lead by the Tea Party. With a full political party at his disposal, David Koch has had a dramatic influence on the face of America.

D. Koch does not feel that cannabis use should be a criminal offense. He told New York Magazine in an 1980 interview “I have friends who smoke pot... It's ridiculous to treat them as criminals.” While he does support decriminalization, David's libertarian ideals make the unregulated and tax-free black market look like paradise. As such, he has not put much effort into deregulating cannabis within his philanthropic pursuits.

Charles Koch

Born in Wichita Kansas during the winter of 1935, Charles Koch is the eldest son of the successful engineer turned businessman Fred Koch. Charles studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1957, he earned his Bachelor of Science in general engineering before completing a Master of Science (M.S.) in mechanical engineering during 1958. Charles was so at home in the academic environment that he then completed another M.S. degree in chemical engineering in 1960.

As of 2010 and after multiple lawsuits concerning ownership, Charles owns 42% of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned business in America. Instead of running for political office like his brother David, Charles has worked to develop a network of charitable foundations, advocacy groups, corporations and think tanks.

He underwrote a documentary screening at the Newseum about the marijuana dealer serving a 55-year sentence; Weldon Angelos. The situation was so extreme that even Angelos’ judge condemned. Charles organised the creation and helped train attorneys to aid poor people across the country fighting legal battles like Weldon's.

Charles admits that his desire to reform the criminal justice system came after a particularly sticky lawsuit in the 1990's. After his run in with the system, he decided that it was too difficult to influence in one direction or another and has been working to relax criminal and civil penalties for everyone since. Whatever his personal agenda, Charles Koch has dedicated an exorbitant amount of resources at changing the legal system to stop the "over-incarceration" of America.

Jeff Bezos

Before starting a online portal that has spawned an industry of its own, Jeffery Bezos was known as Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. Born in January of 1962, Jeff was a mechanically gifted child who grew up on a massive family-owned ranch in Texas. His mother divorced his father almost a year after getting married and later remarried a Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos who adopted Jeff.

Jeff attended Princeton and graduated in 1986 with two Bachelors of Science in electrical engineering and computer science. After graduation, Jeff worked in the computer science field before starting Amazon.com in 1994. It was through Amazon.com that Jeff made his first billion dollars and became known as a micromanager extraordinaire.

While Bezos is notoriously silent on the topic of cannabis, the companies he owns are not. In August of 2016 The Washington Post, a company owned by Bezos, announced that it is considering changing the drug screening to no longer include cannabis. As a person worth multiple billions of dollars, his decision to allow changes to the drug screening test will have far reaching consequences that could help talented individuals come out of the proverbial shadows.

Regardless of the Amazon drug screening process, the loss in tax revenue that states have experienced from Amazon has reached into the multiple billions. The recent legalization of cannabis in Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon is in part due to the hard financial straits that America found itself in during the Great Recession. In that way, the market.

Howard Schultz

The son of a poor man and born in the Bronx New York during 1953, Howard D. Shultz was an athletically gifted youth. As a child he enjoyed attending the Boys and Girls club where he was introduced to both sports and science. in High School he earned an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University where he attended right after completing his senior year.

After graduating from NMU, Schultz went to work for Xerox as a sales consultant. During his time consulting, he met and later joined the Seattle Washington based Starbucks coffee chain in 1982 initially as their Director of Marketing. In 1986, Shultz purchased Starbucks retail side and proceeded to make it a global brand and earn billions of dollars for himself in the process.

Over the decades, Starbucks and Schultz himself have become known for their consistency and the company has been imbued with Howard's customer experience based managerial style to become one of the most profitable companies in the world. The company has become so popular that Starbucks has become the place to meet outside of the office. There are so many stores that in many places you can step out of a Starbucks just to see another across the street.

When Starbucks became the focus of an anti-cannabis legalization scandal, the company was quick to distance itself from the people making the claims called the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA). Companies caught in this situation can choose to assure the public that they support criminalization but Starbucks instead chose to do the opposite and in so doing, helped move the conversation towards legalization instead of away from it.

Rupert Murdoch

Born Keith Rupert Murdoch in the late winter of 1931, this Australian born American is the son of a wealthy and successful newspaper owner. After his father's death in 1952, Rupert decided to found his own newspaper company called News Limited. During the 50's and 60's Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in New Zealand and Australia before expanding to western shores. By 1969, he had gained ownership and control over the UK based News of the World and The Sun.

Murdoch was naturalized to legally gain ownership of a television studio. After acquiring The Times and Twentieth Century Fox in 1985, Rupert Murdoch was poised to launch Fox News and gain a stranglehold on the worlds news. International scandal after international scandal have revealed practices like hacking into the phones of everyone from police investigating his holdings to the British Crown.

Murdoch has been a key player in the war on drugs as his television, print and internet based media outlets have broadcast anti-cannabis propaganda on a level that has never been seen before in history. Even today, acting as the CEO of Fox News after Roger Ailes stepped down after sexual harassment charges were filed by highly respected news anchors, Rupert Murdoch continues his war on cannabis and everything associated with it through lies, misinformation and half-truths.