Porn, Condom King Donates $50K to Marijuana Measure

By NIGEL JAQUISS

The latest tycoon to ante up for a proposed 2014 marijuana legalization measure already backed by billionaires Peter Lewis and George Soros has a fascinating backstory.

Philip Harvey gave $50,000 to New Approach Oregon, according to a Nov.1 filing, adding to the heft of the campaign backed by the groups who succeeded with legalization in Colorado and Washington last year.

Harvey has built an empire by leveraging Americans' taste for pornography and sex toys to pay for birth control for tens of millions of people in the third world. He is the founder and president of DKT International, a Washington, D.C. non-profit that distributes condoms and other birth control devices in 19 third-world countries, making DKT what the company's website says is " the largest private provider of contraceptives and family planning services in the developing world."

"DKT's sales totals for 2012 included 600 million condoms, over 76 million cycles of oral contraceptives, over 16 million injectable contraceptives, over 1.5 million IUDs, emergency contraception, implants, mifepristone/misoprostol, and manual vacuum aspiration kits."

Harvey is also the president of PHE, also known as Adam & Eve, which long before the Internet sold porn films, sex toys and condoms through the mail. In his role as a porn purveyor, Harvey has often battled the federal government on freedom of speech issues. He described some of those battles in a 2001 book, "The Government Vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve."

WWeek 2015

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