On October 31, a six-minute video titled “Chapel Chat with Evangelina Holy” appeared on YouTube. Despite the blurry footage and poor audio, the title character is a dead ringer for Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” character from “Saturday Night Live.” In Carvey’s voice, Holy reads a letter from a viewer worried about marijuana legalization ballot initiatives in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. After promising to pray for the states in question and reciting a litany of problems linked to pot use--testicular cancer, psychosis, stupidity--Holy says, “Speaking of devil’s weed—and the devil—I’d like to introduce my next guest. … Mr. George Soros.” At this point, a large man in a shabby suit lumbers on screen and sits with his back to the camera. Holy berates him in a nearly incoherent sing-song voice for two excruciating minutes.

The video, which was produced by the Drug Free America Foundation and has been viewed just 684 times as of this writing, may not effectively convey its intended anti-drug message, but it does illustrate a major reason opponents of marijuana legalization lost in Colorado and Washington this month: money. Or, more specifically, a lack of it.

Thanks, in part, to George Soros and Progressive Insurance Chairman Peter Lewis (who fund the Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Policy Project, respectively) proponents of Washington State’s Initiative 502 raised $6.2 million; their opponents raised only $15,995. In Colorado, backers of Amendment 64 raised $2.39 million, to their opponents’ $577,410. In Massachusetts, $1.07 million for a medical marijuana initiative; $5,950 against. Even in Arkansas and Oregon, states where the measures ultimately failed, legalization proponents outraised opponents by wide margins.

Why the lack of financial support for anti-drug efforts? Legalization advocates caution that what their opponents lack in donations they more than make up for in government backing. “Prohibitionists are able to benefit from the authority of law enforcement figures in those states who often campaign against marijuana reform initiatives under the mantle of professional organizations like the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police,” says Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Morgan Fox. The Office of National Drug Control Policy is also spending $20 million on its “Above the Influence” campaign in FY 2013 to discourage marijuana use.

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