’I’m tired’ says outgoing Interim Director of the Office of Cannabis Management
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Friday was the last day for the Director of Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management, Charlene Briner. She was appointed in 2023 as Interim Director, which was supposed to be just a few months long gig, but it stretched into a 20-month-long job.
Briner has been nicknamed the Swiss Army knife of state government because of her versatile talents. She was overseeing the rollout of legal recreational marijuana in Minnesota.
Briner has said that she would serve until she felt comfortable, or until the “governor made a decision that somebody else was in a position to take the reins.”
As Briner leaves, she’s proud of the team that they’ve assembled.
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“I have always said, this isn’t about one job. I’m tired. I did not plan on staying for a year and a half,” she said.
Eric Taubel as General Counsel will be taking the reins, she says.
The office has posted their rules for comment, which they will be adapting in a few weeks, and on Wednesday they open for the next round of licensing. Licenses will be handed over in a few months, and Briner says now is a good time to for her to step away.
Briner said part of the struggle to get a permanent director for this office is due to the challenging workload and content. She has heard from other state’s directors that the average tenure of the first director of a cannabis office is 17 months.
“This is not easy work,” Briner said. “It is not for the faint hearted, and it's for people who are really committed to this kind of work.”
She said the difficulties are that the job is high profile, high scrutiny and lacks a federal roadmap. She says the office works with people who “for legitimate reason, sometimes suspect (of) or not comfortable working with government,” and aren’t always accustomed to coming into a regulated space.
Something unique about Minnesota’s challenges is that it was the first agency in decades being built from the ground up, she said, since it was not housed under another agency or in regulatory oversight.
“I didn’t have an HR director or a finance director or a building to operate out of, and so really building those pieces while you actually have legalized something without that regulatory scheme added a layer of challenge,” Briner said.
“All of that said, I think it’s a legitimate choice to say that if we decided not to criminalize, if we decided to stop criminalizing this activity and not penalizing people for this behavior, or this choice prolonging penalty and prolonging the punitive approach doesn’t make a lot of sense either.”
Looking back on how things came to fruition, Briner says they have made incredible progress.
“We’re building this from the ground up, and for better or for worse, this is where we’re at,” she said.