And his long time friends covered for his serial sexual harassment of women young enough to be his daughter. The 41-year-old Kampia started the Marijuana Policy Project in his parents’ basement when he was 26. Now a decade and a half later he’s stepping down after it was discovered that he, along with any man over 20 who smokes pot, is a childish douchebag who uses drugs to get women. Surprise! Middle-age stoners are immature degenerates who can’t function without a team of people who work to clean up the messes they make:
The co-founder of the influential Marijuana Policy Project announced Tuesday that he is stepping down in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal.
Executive Director Rob Kampia said he is taking a three-month medical leave, starting Tuesday evening, to get therapy for his attitudes toward women. “I just think I’m hypersexualized,” he told us.
In August, Kampia slept with a female subordinate after an employee happy hour at a Capitol Hill pub. News of the hookup sparked seven staff resignations, including the woman’s. “It is true I had consensual sex with a female employee and I exhibited poor judgment in doing so,” said Kampia.
Board Chairman Peter Lewis said Kampia was “encouraged” to take the leave and his return is subject to “convincing the board he has dealt with his issues.” Lewis is bringing an outside management team to MPP’s Washington office Wednesday to “see where we are.”
Kampia, 41, co-founded MPP 15 years ago and has become one of the leading voices for marijuana legalization. His career in advocacy was launched by a three-month prison stint during college for growing his own weed and, helped by donations from insurance billionaire Lewis, MPP has begun to eclipse longer-established groups in the field, such as NORML. MPP celebrated its anniversary with a glittering gala last week featuring Cheech and Chong.
The Aug. 6 incident, first reported by High Times and the Washington Examiner, so deeply demoralized the organization that four employees resigned immediately and three others left soon thereafter.
“The judgment and poor character that Rob showed couldn’t be reconciled,” said a former communications staffer (who’s still looking for a job and asked not to be associated with MPP).
Now I’ve been married for many years so correct me if I’m wrong, but consensual sex doesn’t usually cause several people, your sex partner included, to not want to see your face again. I suspect this was “consensual” as in he got some 19- or 20-year-old “drunk” (with a hash chaser I’m sure) then took her home and when she woke up, seeing his face was her bottom. Or he raped her.
The Sexist has details of the event that seem to confirm that he at least took advantage of the woman, as well as the marks who give money to his organization:
At an Aug. 6 MPP happy hour at Union Pub on Capitol Hill, Kampia focused his attentions on one female staffer who’d just split with her boyfriend, an MPP co-worker. “There was no secret that Rob was interested in her sexually the entire time she was [working at MPP], even though she was dating an employee,†says former MMPer Dan Bernath. “Rob’s behavior—and the single-minded way in which he approached that situation—was predatory in every sense of the word. She was days out of a serious long-term relationship. She was vulnerable. Everyone was drinking,†he says.
Kampia denies that he had been waiting for the right moment to pounce on the employee. “I was interested in her for that night,†Kampia says. And at the end of that night, the employee drove away from the bar with Kampia in the passenger’s seat. In the middle of the ride, Kampia asked to take the wheel, worried that his employee was too drunk to drive. Then, he steered her back to his purple Columbia Heights mansion with a rooftop hot tub.
What happened at Kampia’s home is a matter of competing accounts. But according to Kampia’s version of events—the only one that has been related publicly—the evening concluded with “consensual sex†between himself and the female subordinate.
This episode sent shockwaves through the organization. Within days, the incident had inspired the resignation of four staffers, including Bernath, the female subordinate, and her ex-boyfriend.
Wow. A purple mansion with a rooftop hot tub in a swanky neighborhood. Not bad for an ex-con. But I’m sure his organization is not at all a scam to enrich him and his friends.
Remember I said middle age stoners need people to clean up their messes? Kampia has a long time friend named Alison Green who, according to The Sexist, is Kampia’s “deputy” but may be better known to you as the Alison Green who writes an online column for U.S. News and World Reports. Allegations have arisen that Green not only covered for Kampia’s predatory behavior, but actually told new hires to put up with Kampia:
Green was also tasked with prepping new employees for the organization’s work environment. Last May, a new female staffer joined MPP. “By the first or second day, it was clear that something wasn’t quite right there,†the new hire says. That’s when Green sat her down for a session of so-called “Rob Training.†Green delivered a lecture apprising the new employee of Kampia’s professional quirks. “Part of the ‘Rob Training’ was to inform me that Rob tells inappropriate jokes, and that he likes to get drunk with staff members and say offensive things,†says the staffer. “The message was that this was normal there, and I should just accept it.†Green denies that her introductory spiel was “in any way specific to issues of sex or harassment.†And Kampia, for his part, denies that his “hypersexual†office culture was in any way compulsory. “There were people who chose not to [make sexual comments]. It wasn’t something that people had to do,†says Kampia. Everyone, however, was forced to listen to inappropriate sexual comments from Kampia: “I used inappropriate language to nearly everyone on staff,†he says.
Way to run an office, Alison!
Her low point comes later when she admits that the sex Rob Kampia claims was consensual may not have been so consensual at all, but she’s chosen to believe Kampia because the other person is lying. Her evidence? Well, she doesn’t have any but there are pictures of her and Kampia at a bar looking stoned so she knows him better than you or me.
Another drug fueled (alleged) rape supporter is billionaire Peter Lewis who sits on the board of the Marijuana Policy Project. He’s a progressive activist who owns the Progressive insurance company. He is said to have threatened to stop supporting M.P.P. if Kampia was removed. He said this after Kampia was accused of rape. Doesn’t sound particularly “progressive,” now does it?
Grown men who get high do so because they desire to emotionally and psychologically tread water indefinitely. That’s really not a problem for anyone but the people who get sucked into their orbit. But grown men want other people to get high with them because it’s the only way they can get laid. That’s simply the truth. I’m 38, been with my old lady 20 years now. I don’t like people under 30. I don’t dislike them, but I simply am not interested in being anything more than a mentor or good neighbor to someone who I could have fathered.
Now picture the stoner my age that you know (we all know at least one) and what’s his feeling on teens? I bet he has a “friend” who’s 19 or so. I bet he gets girls younger than him high. Why is that? Because he’s so interested in what some kid thinks and wants to spend time with her? Of course not, it’s because he wants to have sex with her.
Robert Kampia had a good scam going. He got rich enough to buy a mansion smoking pot and worked in an office full of people so drug addled he could spend 15 years doing things that would have gotten him arrested, sued, or killed outside of the weed culture. He was an immature degenerate enabled at every turn by the anything goes drug culture which he ingratiated himself into. He did so because he knows what I and everyone else except frequent users know: drug users are easy targets who will allow you to victimize them.
Like I said, I’ve been with my wife 20 years but I have an ex or two. If one of them came to me and said that my middle age stoner boss, who was in the same office as me at that moment, had raped her I”d beat his ass and report him to the cops. I’d tell everyone I could find that he was a scumbag rapist. Six of the alleged victim’s friends’ response to her being victimized was to go find some other place to get high and quietly let the matter work itself out. That’s who stoners are, and why the Kampias of the world will be getting you high and taking advantage of you forever.
If you’re going to go drinking and drugging maybe you should do it without the creepy near 50-year-old who has never found a woman his age willing to marry him. But hey, what do I know. I’m just some guy who’s not “cool enough” to get high with people half my age.
