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Robert Kampia previously co-founded the Marijuana Policy Project in 1995 and served as its executive director for 23 years. After leaving MPP in 2017, he founded the Marijuana Leadership Campaign, based in Austin and Washington, D.C. Robert grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia in Harleysville, Pennsylvania. In 1986, he graduated as valedictorian of his class at Souderton Area High School, and in 1993 he graduated with honors from Penn State University with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science and a minor in English.
In the middle of his seven-year tenure at Penn State where he had a full scholarship, he served three months in a county prison near State College after being convicted of three felonies associated with growing his own marijuana for recreational use. Two years after being released from prison, he was elected to serve as president of Penn State’s student body from 1992 to 1993. Three days after graduating from Penn State in 1993, he moved to Washington, D.C. for the sole purpose of legalizing marijuana in the United States. And he has spent his entire adult life doing just that, toggling between his so-called “Purple Mansion” in D.C. and his house in Austin.
Between 2000 and 2016, Robert was the principal architect of the lobbying campaigns and ballot initiatives that legalized medical marijuana in 14 of the first 30 states that now have such laws on the books. And between 2012 to 2016, Robert oversaw the campaigns that have regulated marijuana like alcohol in five of the first eight states that have done so — most notably in Colorado, which in 2012 became the first U.S. state (and the first jurisdiction in the world) to end marijuana prohibition entirely for adults 21 and older.
In his spare time, Robert travels internationally as a world tourist, practices yoga and meditation, listens to heavy metal, writes humor and blog posts, reads The Washington Post, and exercises (when he’s not running his mouth).
Two decades before marijuana mercenaries were paid six figures to influence cannabis policy, a backbenching legislator with compassion for his sickest constituents began a journey that no one else would take. His “longer-than-long-shot” legislation became law. And he did it for free.
Don Murphy, a law and order Republican serving his second term on the Maryland House Judiciary Committee, became the accidental advocate for medical marijuana patients after a conversation in 1999 with Lt. Col. Darrell Putman, a Vietnam veteran who was using cannabis to treat cancer with his doctor’s approval. Putman asked the tough-on-crime legislator, “Do you think I’m a criminal?” Murphy, remembering his own father’s painful cancer death, said, “No.” “Well, you’re a lawmaker, and unless you do something to change the law, I am,” Putman responded.
That interaction, just two months before Putman’s death, led to passage of Maryland’s Darrell Putman Compassionate Use Act and sent Murphy around the country testifying and lobbying on behalf of patients in dozens of states and on Capitol Hill. As a pro-cannabis conservative, he holds a unique and rare position. Named one of the top federal advocates by Politico, Murphy lobbies Congress to de-schedule cannabis, reform cannabis banking, and pass 280E tax policy. From the State House to the White House, he has carried this message to the highest levels of government. In a Bloomberg profile, the National Cannabis Industry Association said, “If we had ten Don Murphys, cannabis would be legal now.”
Murphy is a regular in the halls of Congress and can often be found greeting members on the Capitol steps. Often quoted in pro-cannabis publications, he has been the subject of profiles in Leafly, Politico, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post.
Murphy defeated the House Majority Leader in 1994 in his first run for office after his wife was held up in an armed robbery at a convenience store near their home.
After leaving office in 2002, Murphy founded Republicans for Compassionate Access where he organized two political campaigns leading to the defeat of the legislature’s top medical marijuana opponents — one a Republican state senator, the other the Democratic House Speaker.
Proving that support for ending the drug war is not the third rail of Republican politics, over the past two decades, Murphy has been elected to represent Maryland as a voting delegate at four of the past six RNC conventions (one as Chair of the Delegation).
https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/liberty-jobs-freedom-how-cannabis-became-a-conservative-issue
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/lindsey-graham-pot-journey-medical-marijuana-214266
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/corporate-governance/cannabiss-friendly-conservative-face-tackles-congress
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2000/02/22/conservative-push-for-pot/509f4b01-10e8-4cd8-afa5-0cb040cf8b00/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/06/joe-biden-legalize-marijuana-111642