The Orange County Register Editorial Board once interviewed state Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco) about his bill to decriminalize the use of some psychedelics. We questioned the obvious inconsistency between his anti-prohibition stance on mushrooms and his prohibitionist stance on vaping and flavored-tobacco products. He reminded us that he's a San Francisco progressive and not a libertarian. Fair point.
I recall that encounter as I mulled Wiener's Senate Bill 982, which mainly encourages the state attorney general to sue oil companies "for climate-attributable damage to recover costs and losses suffered by the California FAIR Plan." The Fair Access to Insurance Requirement Plan is the state-created, insurance-industry-funded, barebones insurer of last resort. It has been teetering on the fiscal brink since property insurers began exiting the state or reducing their underwriting, thus overloading the plan with customers.
