Built On Purpose

Keith Stroup is a Washington, DC public-interest attorney who founded NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) in 1970.  Stroup obtained his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Illinois in 1965, and in 1968 he graduated from Georgetown Law School in Washington, DC. Stroup first smoked marijuana when he was a first-year law student and has been a regular smoker since. Following two years as staff counsel for the National Commission on Product Safety following law school, a job that allowed him to avoid the Vietnam War with a critical skills deferment, Stroup founded NORML and ran the organization through 1979, during which time 11 states decriminalized minor marijuana offenses. Stroup has also practiced criminal law, lobbied on Capitol Hill for family farmers and artists, and for several years served as executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).

 In 1994 Stroup resumed his work with NORML, rejoining the board of dir