MEDIA ADVISORY

DECEMBER 23, 2017

AUSTIN and WASHINGTON, D.C.

CONTACT: Rob Kampia

MarijuanaLeadershipCampaign [AT SYMBOL] gmail.com
(Allow 2 days for a response between Dec. 23 and Jan. 11)

Rob Kampia Forming “Marijuana Leadership Campaign” to Change

Targeted State and Federal Marijuana Laws

On Dec. 23, Rob Kampia announced the formation of the new

“Marijuana Leadership Campaign” (MLC), which intends to work
with key institutions like the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) to
change targeted state and federal marijuana laws. As with
Kampia’s tenure at MPP, which he co-founded in 1995, his new
company will focus almost exclusively on changing U.S. laws.

GEOGRAPHIC AREAS OF FOCUS: Kampia’s new business will

focus on changing what he calls the “tough laws” -- lobbying
Congress to de-federalize all marijuana laws, lobbying the Texas
and South Carolina Legislatures to legalize medical marijuana,
and passing the voter initiative that’s slated to appear on
Michigan’s statewide ballot in Nov. 2018.

STRATEGIC PARTNERS: MLC will work alongside the

institutions he views as most effective in each sector. On the
federal level, Kampia views MPP, the National Cannabis Industry
Association (NCIA), and the New Federalism Fund as leading the
charge. On the state level, MLC will more than triple the
funding for “Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy” and double
the funding for “Compassionate SC” in South Carolina. With
ballot initiatives, MLC will support the “Coalition to Regulate
Marijuana Like Alcohol” in Michigan. As for professional
associations, MLC will provide substantial funding for “Doctors
for Cannabis Regulation,” the “Law Enforcement Action
Partnership,” and “Clergy for a New Drug Policy.”

FUNDING: Nearly $500,000 in seed money for Kampia’s new

endeavor is being provided by a marijuana investment firm in Los
Angeles, a major marijuana dispensary in Colorado, Kampia’s
wealthy friends in Texas (where he lives half-time), and a
coalition of new donors in South Carolina.
 STRUCTURE: The leadership structure of MLC, which Kampia
formed as an LLC consulting firm, will be composed of two 10-
person steering committees -- one to oversee the federal
lobbying campaign, and the other to oversee the Texas effort --
with 20 donors contributing a minimum of $100,000 each in 2018,
amounting to a total of more than $2,000,000.

==============================

TIME FRAME (PAST): Discussions involving Kampia’s

departure from MPP began in late Oct. and reached the first of
two milestones on Nov. 17, when the MPP board agreed to shift
Kampia from Executive Director to Director of Strategic
Development at MPP. The Nov. 21 announcement of this change
opened new business opportunities for Kampia, who jokes that
working full-time for nonprofit organizations is “a good way to
avoid amassing wealth,” while working on marijuana policy reform
through an LLC would allow him to form business relationships
with for-profit institutions. While Kampia initially proposed
splitting his time equally between MPP and the new MLC, Kampia
and his fellow MPP board members reached a second milestone by
voting unanimously on Dec. 20 to end his full-time status at MPP
this weekend.

TIME FRAME (PRESENT): After Kampia returns to the U.S.

after a long-planned vacation to celebrate New Year’s Eve and
his birthday in the Caribbean, MLC will be holding its first
leadership meeting in Dallas on Feb. 1 and Austin two weeks
later. In addition, MLC will hold its first steering-committee
meeting on Capitol Hill in late February.

TIME FRAME (FUTURE): By forming an LLC, Kampia is no

longer prohibited from sitting on the boards of for-profit
marijuana businesses. In addition to these investment
opportunities, Kampia will now divide his time as follows: (1)
Actively managing MLC’s pair of congressional and Texas lobbying
campaigns; (2) working intensely on the South Carolina and
Michigan campaigns; (3) raising money to make MDMA (known as
“Ecstasy”) available as a prescription medicine for the
treatment of PTSD and end-of-life anxiety; and (4) writing a
book that provides an insider’s look at the marijuana-
legalization movement, which Kampia has helped lead since being
released from a Pennsylvania prison for marijuana cultivation in
1990, when he was just 21 years old.

==============================
 “I’m particularly excited about writing my book, which will
be nonfiction but will oftentimes read like fiction, as my life
is strewn with outrageous experiences that are sometimes
relevant to readers who have an interest in politics generally
and marijuana policy specifically,” said Kampia. “The book is
already one-eighth written, and I’m planning to spend my time in
the Bahamas and other sunny islands writing another three-
eighths of the book. In fact, one reason I’m leaving MPP is to
write this book, with an aggressive book tour planned for the
fall of 2018.”

Kampia has an almost unbroken track record of predicting

the timing of law changes that he’s working toward, sometimes
betting $1,000 onstage with intellectual adversaries or
previewing the future during TV/video interviews, such as this
one with Reason TV in July 2011, fully 16 months before MPP’s
landmark victory in Colorado in Nov. 2012:

www.facebook.com/rob.kampia/videos/vb.735227958/10156004755217959

As such, political pundits and marijuana investors would be

wise to listen to Kampia’s predictions for the projects he’s
most interested in pursuing: “Voters will legalize medical
marijuana in Missouri and Utah -- as well as the adult use of
marijuana in Michigan -- in Nov. 2018,” Kampia predicted.
“We’ll legalize medical marijuana in Texas and South Carolina
through those two states’ legislatures in the spring of 2019.
And 2022 is the year when Congress is most likely to pass the
ultimate bill to legalize marijuana on the federal level, giving
states the right to determine their own policies without federal
interference.”

“I hope to be standing behind President Rand Paul during

his bill-signing ceremony in the White House in 2022,” Kampia
concluded, only half-jokingly.

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