The woman who resigned one day after her appointment to lead Minnesota's office of Cannabis Management says she wishes she could have been given the opportunity to respond to media reports that indicated she sold illegal marijuana products at her Apple Valley business prior to them being published.
Erin DuPree spoke Monday on the WCCO Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar about how those reports were one-sided because she was advised not to comment.
"Had I been allowed to speak to the people that were writing the articles, they would have looked a lot differently, because they would have been able to hear what was actually going on in those situations," she said, calling the reports one-sided.
Dupree said she never knowingly sold anything that was out of compliance.
"Any small business owners who sells hemp-derived products understands how confusing and convoluted our laws were." Dupree said. "To be quite honest, that was one of the reasons that I wanted to serve our state and community."
Dupree said a statement about those reports concerning illegal products and financial issues in her past will be made soon.
"There are definately things that I wish I could have said before I withdrew," she said. "But, at this time, I'm not willing to talk about them on the advice of my attorney."
Dupree says she feels like she was smeared in those reports, and that the era of legalized recreational marijuna is not off to a good starts.
"The process in general has been a very poignant learning experience," she said. "I know now more about how controlled, and kind of contrived, and how much cronyism actually exists in the Minnesota cannabis market before it even starts."
Over the weekend, Gov. Walz took responsibility for Dupree's appointment.
Dupree accepted the position on Thursday, but by Friday afternoon, she stepped away after reports that her company, Loonacy Cannabis in Apple Valley, had sold illegal cannabis products at one time.
At a prescheduled event on Saturday, Walz said the process "did not work" and that his office "got it wrong."