Shortly after concluding the NORML National Conference, our own Keith Stroup and Rick Steves made the trip up I-5, joined by MPP’s Rob Kampia and DPA’s Ethan Nadelmann, for a seminar presented by the ACLU of Washington’s Alison Holcomb entitled, “The Future of Marijuana in Washington State”.

Rob Kampia, Executive Director of MPP

(HIGH TIMES) Rob Kampia has been officially reinstated as the executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project following a three-month, unpaid leave of absence according to a spokesman for the organization.

“Rob is back effective today,” according to MPP director of communications Mike Meno. “The board voted yesterday and we’re hoping to continue with the work of ending marijuana prohibition in this country.”

HIGH TIMES has learned that Kampia was reinstated during a contentious conference call meeting of the nine-person board and that the close vote on his potential return was followed by the resignation of at least two board members, one immediately and one within twenty-four hours. A spokesman for the Berkeley Patients Group released a statement confirming that their “representative has decided to resign from the board and to focus on implementation and self-regulation of medical cannabis laws.”

Mitch Earleywine, a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the State University of New York and an MPP board member since 2005 has also submitted his formal resignation.

How very interesting yet completely unsurprising.  It’s remarkable, that three-month psychotherapy for “hypersexualization“.    Is there any public relations disaster rehab can’t cure?  Well, at least we can all move on from this sordid tale and get back to re-legalization, because rehab fixes everything and this debacle could never have a negative impact on the movement:

StopthePot.com highlights MPP sex scandal to attack the Arizona medical marijuana initiative

(Your West Valley) PHOENIX — A Phoenix political consultant has launched a campaign designed to convince Arizonans not to allow medical marijuana in the state.

Web pages already erected by the committee appear designed both to alarm Arizonans about the effects of the ballot measure and undermine the credibility of the national Marijuana Policy Project which is funding the Arizona initiative.

[Former Sen. McCain fundraiser Max] Fose, in his web site, pointed out that Rob Kampia, the organization’s executive director, took a three month “medical leave,” a leave that WashingtonPost.com said was due to charges of having sex with a staffer. Meno confirmed that Kampia, in leaving to get therapy, said he was “hypersexualized.”

I do have to note the irony of Max Fose, a former fundraiser for the Arizona senator who cheated on his wife, getting all in a huff about a single guy’s sexual exploits.  Crude and inappropriate as his actions were for fifteen years, Kampia never broke the law, violated a marital vow, or broke a (non-existent) corporate sexual harassment policy.

And that’s about all I can type without crossing over into my personal feelings on the matter… except to encourage you to contribute to the NORML Women’s Alliance to help promote women’s perspectives on marijuana law reform.

Rob Kampia, center, poses with Tommy Chong, left, and Richard "Cheech" Marin at last Wednesday's Marijuana Policy Project gala. (Ben Droz / Wash. Post)

From the Washington Post…

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 this evening, to get therapy for his attitudes toward women. “I just think I’m hyper-sexualized,” he told us.

In August, Kampia slept with a female subordinate after an employee happy hour at a Capitol Hill pub. News of the hook-up 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,” Kampia said.

Board chairman Peter Lewis told us 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 a outside management team to MPP’s Washington office Wednesday to “see where we are.”

Some staffers described the incident as a final straw after years of witnessing Kampia’s “predatory behavior” in the office, said former director of membership Salem Pearce. “He was known as someone who made crude and inappropriate comments about and to women,” she said. “The No. 1 perk for Rob about MPP was the access to young women.” Pearce was one of the women who resigned because she was convinced that Kampia and MPP’s board were not going to address the matter. “I realized Rob was more interested in keeping his job than the good of the organization,” she said.

Due to an engineering error between my chair and my keyboard, I only got the last 25 minutes of the live show recorded to day for podcast. Sorry!

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2010-01-15.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. SC Sheriff Leon Lott brags about the state’s record pot bust
2. Study of 50,000 in Sweden shows no correlation between cannabis use and risk of suicide
3. MPP Founder & Executive Director Rob Kampia embroiled in sexual scandal that led to abrupt resignation of 7 senior staffers, vote of “no confidence”.

Daily Toker Tunes

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Government at Work

• “Radical” Russ’s & Madeline Martinez’s experience at the 2007 MPP GREAT Workshop, featuring Rob Kampia’s presentation: “Fundraising is like Dating”
• Virginia, New Hampshire pushing decrim bills
• Tennessee introduces medical marijuana legislation

Show 004: Three special episodes live from NORML National Conference!

NORML’s new talk radio program, NORML SHOW LIVE, will be streaming for three days at the 2009 NORML National Conference, “Yes We Cannabis”, live from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco. These special three-hour episodes will be available at live.norml.org at the following special times and archived for download later just fifteen minutes after broadcast:

1. Thursday, September 24
   11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
2. Friday, September 25
   11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
3. Saturday, September 26
   3:00pm – 6:00pm Pacific Time

The show will be hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, but with very limited commercial interruption and the occasional narration.  After the shows broadcast remotely in the difficult wireless environment of Portland’s Kelley Point Park and the noisy backstage of the Boston Freedom Rally, Russ is excited to present an indoor event that will take its audio directly from the conference PA system.

Thursday’s show will begin with a presentation by Dr Brooks J Kelly, Ph.D, Chief science officer for Genovations Laboratory, Cannabis Therapeutics, and then will feature panels on Individual Patients, Caregivers, and Small Patient Collectives in California and other medical marijuana states, including:

Patient and Caregiver rights under 215/SB420

• Possession: current caselaw and statutory law
• Cultivation: current caselaw and statutory law
• Transportation: current caselaw and statutory law
• Obtaining Cannabis: where and how to get it
• Patients Not Authorized to:
  distribute to other patients
  distribute “excess” to clubs
  engage in conduct harmful to others

Cannabis Patient rights (or lack thereof):

• No right to protection from employment discrimination
• No protection from Feds or other states
• Student loans
• Section 8 housing
• Small collectives: formation, cultivating, obtaining of medicine, money considerations
• Interaction with Law Enforcement

Your panelists will include Dr. David Bearman, Chris Conrad, Omar Figueroa, Esq., Zenia Gilg, Esq., Dr. Frank Lucido, and your moderator is William Panzer, Esq.

Friday’s show will begin with a panel on Pot Politics 2009 and Beyond.  A record number of state legislatures debated marijuana law reform in 2009; a nationwide panel of experts discusses our progress.  Our moderator is Keith Stroup, Esq., NORML, speaking on Federal Legislation, and also includes:

• Chris Goldstein, Director, Penn. For Medical Marijuana
• Rob Kampia, Executive Director, Marijuana Policy Project
• Dan Linn, Executive Director, Illinois NORML
• Madeline Martinez, Director, Oregon NORML, member of NORML’s board of directors
• Jesse Stout, former Director of RIPAC
• Ken Wolski, RN, Director, Coalition for Medical Marijuana NJ

We follow with a luncheon with travel author and NORML advisory board member Rick Steves presenting the ACLU DVD: ‘Marijuana: Its Time for a Conversation’, and close by asking “Has support for legalization reached a critical mass/tipping point?”  According to national polls, public support for legalizing marijuana has never been higher. Why now? And how do we mobilize this public support into political change? Leaders in the drug law reform movement discuss these trends, and what they portend for future reform efforts.  Our moderator is Dave Fratello, Coast Campaign Group, and the panel includes:

• Dale Gieringer, Ph.D, Director, CA NORML; member of NORML’s board of directors
• Rich Lee, Proprietor of ‘Oaksterdam University’ and Campaigner for ‘The Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010′
• Harry Levine, Ph.D, Queens College

Saturday’s closing show will feature a look at Marijuana Legalization As a Local, State, Federal Revenue Stream. In today’s sagging economy national, state and local leaders are looking for alternative streams of revenue. They should look no further than to America’s #1 cash crop: cannabis.  Our moderator is Dale Gieringer, Ph.D, Director, CA NORML, and the panelists include:

• Jon Gettman, Ph.D
• Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland City Council
• Mark Kleiman, Ph.D, UCLA

We follow with a panel on Cannabis and Athleticism. Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today’s pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do.  Our moderator is Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com and the panelists include:

• Toby Grear, MMA fighter,
• Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmmaker; former ESPN producer
• Mark Stepnoski, Former All-Star NFL football player, NORML Advisory Board
• Rob Van Dam, Professional wrestler

Our three-part special show concludes with a talk from Rick Steves, TV host/best-selling travel author, NORML Advisory Board

Please join us for unparalleled access to the heart of marijuana law reform, nine total hours of content from the best and brightest minds in the movement, all absolutely free for you on the internet, courtesy of the donations of stakeholder cannabis consumers and liberty lovers all across this country who donate to and volunteer with NORML.  Mark us as a favorite on BlogTalkRadio and post us on your Twitter and Facebook with the tag #NORML.

More video from the continuing Anderson Cooper series, “America’s High: The case for and against pot”:

My dos centavos:

#1 Oh, go get a glass of water! It’s tough enough breaking the stoner stereotype (“stoneotype?”) when your eyes naturally look half-lidded anyway, but to add the audible smacks of a dry mouth makes it even harder.

#2 When David goes for the FDA route, decent comeback on “we’d love to”, but how can you miss mentioning the FDA warning released hours earlier that says Zicam may kill your sense of smell? Or uttering the word “Vioxx”? Also need to point out the disingenuousness of the FDA route and bolster medical marijuana’s acceptance by picking up on Anderson’s AMA comment – “the AMA says there isn’t enough scientific proof of medical marijuana, despite 17,000 peer-reviewed studies that prove it, but when we try to get scientific studies of marijuana from the government, NIDA refuses to allow them to take place

#3 When David goes to the “alcohol and cigs cost more to society than the taxes they bring in”, decent comeback on how harmful they are and marijuana’s safer, but still leaves viewer with impression there will be increased usage and costs from legal marijuana. I’d add, “David, almost everyone who wants to — 22 million adults annually — use marijuana NOW, so we’re already absorbing any of these ‘imaginary costs’ you mention, while also taking in $0 in tax revenue and spending $7.7B on prohibition. Taxing existing marijuana users would bring in $6.2B and eliminate $7.7B in prohibition costs, so these imaginary costs from the few new users would have to top $13.6B/year for your theory to make any sense. Also, if these new users were giving up other drugs and alcohol in favor of marijuana, overall costs for drug and alcohol abuse in this nation would drop.”

Overall, nice job discussing a complicated issue in the sub-five minutes you were given. But I think the days where we need be polite and respectful to our prohibitionist opponents on TV are over. These people need to be treated like the liars they are and our responses should become a bit more forceful in that respect. The people are largely on our side and are thirsting for someone to smack down one of these opponents of liberty.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In case you missed it, Paul Armantano has a great piece about this unexpected good news. It’s very notable that the anchor begins to put very pointed questions to the prohibitionist that was brought on to “debate” Rob Kampia.

If you live in CA, be sure to drop Arnold a line at NORML take action page.

Many of these drug warriors are clearly unhinged, their views informed more by blind zealotry than by sober policy analysis. That’s why I hesitate to post this video of longtime anti-drug culture warrior Joyce Nalepka attempting to disrupt a recent MPP-sponsored press conference regarding faulty drug tests administered by law enforcement. After all, there are shaky folks on all sides of the marijuana policy debate, and I don’t think it’s right to single out the clowns on such a serious matter.

However, as Nalepka herself points out in this exchange with MPP’s Rob Kampia, she has drug policy experience – if not expertise – and the larger, federal drug war establishment hasn’t exactly tried to disassociate itself from her. She’s president of Drug Free Kids: America’s Challenge and was once president of the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth, which Nancy Reagan chaired during her husband’s presidency.

Click here to view the embedded video.