Nearly eight years ago, City Paper detailed a local sex scandal involving staffers at the Marijuana Policy Project, an influential advocacy group focused on promoting non-punitive marijuana laws.
Certain facts are undisputed: In early August 2009, Rob Kampia left an employee happy hour at Union Pub on Capitol Hill with a female subordinate. Kampia was the organization’s co-founder and executive director; the woman had, days earlier, broken up with her boyfriend, who was also an MPP employee. The woman was behind the wheel, but halfway through Kampia asked to drive, worried she was too drunk. He then took her back to his house in Columbia Heights, where they had sex.
Within two weeks, seven employees, including the woman, resigned from the organization. All MPP department heads joined together to unanimously call on the board to remove Kampia as executive director.
Kampia was well-known for making sexually inappropriate comments in the workplace, but after the August incident, according to several people who worked there at the time, the office felt not just creepy, but predatory. [Read more at Washington City Paper]