Top Marijuana Advocacy Organization Welcomes New Leader Who Sees ‘Opportunities To Make Progress’ In 2025

It’s the beginning of a new chapter in the cannabis policy reform movement, and as 2025 legislative sessions get underway, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) has a new leader at the helm.

Lauren Daly has been named as the leading cannabis organization’s interim executive director. With a background in drug policy and civil rights advocacy—and years of experience in a fundraising capacity—the plan is to help elevate MPP’s work at a critical inflection point at the state and federal levels.

“When I first started learning about the broader drug war—not just cannabis—it became something that I couldn’t turn away from and really wanted to be involved in,” Daly told Marijuana Moment in an interview. “So it’s important to me, and also a really big and exciting challenge to try on.”

For Daly, the new position represents something of a full circle. More than a decade ago, she served as a membership coordinator at MPP, stuffing envelopes with renewal letters to support the organization’s grassroots efforts to affect the cannabis policy landscape. In the years since, she’s also served in top roles at Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the ACLU of the District of Columbia, Brown University and more.

One key skill she brings to the table is fundraising—which has become critically important for grassroots cannabis groups as philanthropic support has gradually dwindled, posing a significant challenge for advocates as they’ve continued to work to end prohibition in states across the U.S. while also influencing federal marijuana policy.

“Fundraising is a core function of any executive director, and I’m prepared to devote a lot of my time to that work,” Daly said. “I know coming in that one of my challenges will be to re-energize our fundraising, and an important piece of that is going to be raising awareness of how much work there still is to do on cannabis reform.”

Increasingly, as more state markets have emerged—in no small way assisted by organizations like MPP—industry stakeholders have taken on a more prominent role in the push for reform, with a particular focus on Congress. But Daly says MPP is uniquely positioned to bring industry and advocacy together in their mutual push to replace criminalization with regulation.

“MPP has served as a bridge between the grassroots and the industry for a long time—and working together with many different allies allows us to make the biggest possible impact,” she said. “Seeking compromise and making incremental progress is a lot of what makes MPP effective, but, ultimately, our priority is policy that supports patients and creates a market where there’s safe access to cannabis and, importantly, stops the pipeline into the criminal legal system.”

Also, while MPP of late has focused much of its resources on state-level reform, Daly said the organization will be “refocusing on federal work.”

She noted that, with President Donald Trump having endorsed certain reforms on the campaign trail—including rescheduling and cannabis industry banking access—”there could be opportunities to make progress at the federal level, and we’re coordinating with our allies and want to be ready to respond to any opportunity that arises.”

But MPP won’t be turning away from its work on state-level reform, and Daly said the organization is eyeing several states that may be ripe for legalization in 2025. That includes, she said, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire—even Louisiana, though that might be a “longer-term push.”

“In addition to new states legalizing, we’re also working with allies to defend legalization from being pared down in Nebraska and Ohio,” she said. “And then on the medical front, we’re getting started in Wisconsin and might have opportunities in North and South Carolina.”

In the background, certain members of MPP also remain “interested” in the prospect of merging with another major cannabis advocacy group, NORML. While talks between the organizations didn’t result in a merger last year, Daly assured that “it could be discussed again, and I’ll follow the board’s direction on that.”

Daly will be taking the reins of MPP from Matthew Schweich—a legacy executive at the organization who has stepped in to lead its work at multiple junctures over its history. Most recently, he took on the interim executive director role after its former leader Toi Hutchinson stepped down in 2023.

“I think Lauren is the perfect person to lead MPP,” Schweich told Marijuana Moment. “She truly believes in our mission and her work in the drug policy reform movement is proof of that. Also, she has excellent fundraising experience, which is an important skill to bring to the table.”

MPP was founded in the mid-90s by Rob Kampia, a former NORML staffer, but he stepped down in 2017, after which point Schweich took over in an interim executive role for nearly a year before the position was filled by Steve Hawkins. Then Hawkins left in 2021, and the organization hired Hutchinson later that year.

Looking ahead, the push for reform may be complicated in 2025, with open questions about how the new administration might navigate cannabis issues and much work still cut out for advocates at the state level. But MPP is expressing optimism that the momentum is there, and the new leadership change could help usher in positive outcome for reform allies in the new year.

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Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.

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