Dear Governor Tim Walz and OCM interim-Director Charlene Briner:

In the wake of the appointment withdrawal of Erin Dupree, a coalition of stakeholders in Minnesota’s Cannabis community are calling on Governor Tim Walz to appoint the other finalist, Clemon Dabney III, PhD to serve as the founding Director of the Office of Cannabis Management. We strongly believe that ‘Doctor Dabs' possesses the relevant Cannabis scientific and industry experience, knowledge, skills, and values which make him uniquely qualified to be the most ideal choice for this critically important position. Unlike your initial appointee, Doctor Dabney is well known and respected in the emerging legal Cannabis industry, he has established relationships with the Department of Agriculture, University of Minnesota and Native American nations in our state, and he well understands the racial injustice that has shamefully characterized prohibition here and the imperatives for leading the state’s regulatory agency with a commitment to redressing the harms of the drug war by operating the office with an equitable lens in terms of staffing, rulemaking, legislative advocacy, licensing and regulation. 

Timing is everything, and Minnesota’s nearly 1,000,000 Cannabis consumers deserve to have an efficient implementation of our adult-use Cannabis market to replace the underground legacy market. We urge you to avoid restarting the recruitment and hiring process given the fact that Doctor Dabney emerged as the runner up out of 150 applicants during the first attempt. Most of us who have been active in advocating for legalization or working in the nascent industry for the past several years were surprised and disappointed by your missed opportunity to appoint him as OCM Director on the first attempt, but we feel relieved that you have a second chance to get it right. 

We are all concerned about regulatory capture and the threats of “Big Marijuana” potentially dominating the Minnesota Cannabis market, but we also fear the establishment of an Office of Cannabis Management by traditional bureaucrats who may lack a comprehensive understanding of this healing plant and unique industry which typically results in Cannabis regulators failing to avoid the pitfalls that have sabotaged nearly every other state’s regulated Cannabis markets, where they have overly regulated and overly taxed their markets and failed to justly repair the harms of prohibition by not establishing true equity and justice in legalization.

Although Doctor Dabney may lack bureaucratic experience leading a large public institution, the lack thereof which was curiously not used against Erin Dupree, he can hire qualified staff with such experience in other key leadership roles in the OCM to compensate. Doctor Dabney has demonstrated expertise and leadership in the cannabis industry for years and his comprehensive understanding has him poised to lead a rulemaking process that will best prepare the development of an equitable, thriving craft Cannabis industry in our state, leveling the entrepreneurial playing field as much as possible and best serving the interests of public health, public safety, economic development, and social and racial justice. It is rare for Cannabis stakeholders to be as united about anything as most of us are about our resounding endorsement of Clemon Dabney III, PhD as the first director of Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management. 

Please support our request in the spirit of repairing the harms of prohibition and embodying your campaign of #OneMinnesota within the diverse Cannabis space. We remain open to collaboration and look forward to supporting you in any way necessary in this process. 

Signed: