Contributor

Rob Kampia

Rob Kampia is co-founder and executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.

Rob Kampia is co-founder and executive director of MPP. A high school valedictorian and straight-A student, he served three months in prison for growing his own marijuana for personal use at Penn State University and was elected student body president two years later at that same school. Upon graduating with honors from Penn State in 1993 with a degree in Engineering Science and a minor in English, he moved to Washington, D.C., for the purpose of ending the government’s war on marijuana users. He co-founded MPP in 1995; within two years, MPP established itself as the leading organization on Capitol Hill to call for the repeal of marijuana prohibition. Rob has testified before legislative committees in California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, Vermont, Washington state, and the U.S. House of Representatives. He has debated the marijuana issue on national TV dozens of times against then-White House deputy drug czar Andrea Barthwell, then-Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), then-DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson, former California attorney general Dan Lungren, and other prohibitionists. Rob helped author many of the medical marijuana laws that are now on the books in 28 states, and was instrumental in marijuana becoming legal in most of the eight states that have ended marijuana prohibition. For more info about MPP, visit mpp.org.