The Denver 4/20 Rally, scheduled to take place on April 20, is offering something new this year. Each attendee age 21 or over will receive a black bag containing tons of swag from marijuana businesses that were unable to legally give away such items at big public events in the past because of restrictive advertising rules related to cannabis.

Civic Center Park Productions’ Santino Walter, who spoke to us for our recent post “Inside the 2017 Denver 4/20 Rally Starring 2 Chainz,” says the black-bag plan was formulated after consultation with representatives from the City Attorney’s Office and Denver’s Marijuana Policy Division. The result, he maintains, is “the most compliant way for licensed cannabis companies in Colorado to promote themselves at an event.”

Colorado’s rules for marijuana advertising are exceedingly tight in comparison to a number of other states that have legalized recreational cannabis, as I saw firsthand during a recent trip to Seattle and Portland. For instance, outdoor advertising is generally prohibited here, as outlined in the following excerpt from the “Permanent Rules Related to the Colorado Retail Marijuana Code:”

Except as otherwise provided in this rule, it shall be unlawful for any Retail Marijuana Establishment to engage in Advertising that is visible to members of the public from any street, sidewalk, park or other public place, including Advertising utilizing any of the following media: any billboard or other outdoor general Advertising device; any sign mounted on a vehicle, any hand-held or other portable sign; or any handbill, leaflet or flier directly handed to any person in a public place, left upon a motor vehicle, or posted upon any public or private property without the consent of the property owner.

The Colorado Department of Revenue just released its final statistics for 2016, the state’s third year of recreational marijuana sales — and MMJ and recreational marijuana sales combined totaled $1.3 billion in sales. In 2015, total sales came close to a billion but didn’t top that number.

Recreational marijuana accounted for $875 million in sales, while medical sales were just under $440 million.

The final numbers for 2016 will soon be released by the Colorado Department of Revenue; in the meantime, we did a deep dive into stats from the Marijuana Enforcement Division for the first six months of last year, and they reflect what we already knew: Cannabis cultivation and sales are on the rise.

Between January and June of 2016, Colorado issued 9,098 more medical licenses and 6,935 more retail licenses. In all, 16,033 licenses were added; that total covers retail and medical stores, cultivation facilities, product-manufacturing facilities and testing facilities. Retail manufacturing facilities alone rose by 15 percent from 2015.

Andrew Freedman is moving on from his position as Colorado’s Director of Marijuana Coordination, Governor John Hickenlooper announced on January 5.

Freedman will still be involved with the cannabis industry and constructing policy: He’s launching a consulting firm, Freedman & Koski LLC, which will advise state and local governments on the implementation of marijuana legalization. (The firm’s website is already live, and packed with pot info.)

After working as Lieutenant Governor Joe Garcia’s chief of staff from 2011 to 2013, Freedman became the campaign director for Yes on 66: Colorado Commits to Kids; from there, Hickenlooper hired Freedman to head up the state’s marijuana coordination office.

Andrew Freedman is moving on from his position as Colorado’s Director of Marijuana Coordination, Governor John Hickenlooper announced on January 5.

Freedman will still be involved with the cannabis industry and constructing policy: He’s launching a consulting firm, Freedman & Koski LLC, which will advise state and local governments on the implementation of marijuana legalization. (The firm’s website is already live, and packed with pot info.)

After working as Lieutenant Governor Joe Garcia’s chief of staff from 2011 to 2013, Freedman became the campaign director for Yes on 66: Colorado Commits to Kids; from there, Hickenlooper hired Freedman to head up the state’s marijuana coordination office.

This year, Colorado proved just how profitable marijuana can be.

In the first ten months of 2016, Colorado topped $1 billion in marijuana sales, according to the Department of Revenue. By the end of October, the state had racked up $1.1 billion in legal sales of medical and recreational marijuana — a number that easily topped the $996 million in revenue reported in 2015.

Colorado residents are likely to see tighter restrictions on marijuana home grows in 2017. Not only is Denver working on a plan to limit unlicensed recreational and medical grows in private residences, but Governor John Hickenlooper is working on a statewide proposal to battle what he sees as an abuse of Colorado’s constitutional growing allowances.

Under Amendment 20, which legalized medical marijuana in Colorado in 2000, medical users can grow up to 99 plants in their private residences, while 2012’s Amendment 64 allows recreational users to combine their allotted six plants into co-ops, effectively creating large-scale growing operations in which the plants aren’t taxed or tracked by the state.

Andrew Freedman spends his days neck-deep in cannabis. As the director of the Governor’s Office of Marijuana Coordination for Colorado, he knows the ins and outs of just about everything about the drug and how it relates to the state. We just sat down with him to discuss, among other things, Denver’s social-use initiative and how the state will be involved in implementation, how states that legalized marijuana in November are building on Colorado’s model, and where he thinks Colorado businesses might expand next.

Today you’ll have a chance to ask Freedman your own questions during our Facebook Live interview with him at 2 p.m. But first, our own Q&A:

There are many questions surrounding Initiative 300, the social-use measure that Denver voters passed on November 8 (although the final count took a week). The city has been getting calls from people asking everything from how businesses can apply to how a new state rule will affect I-300. As we reported last week, shortly after the initiative passed, the Colorado Department of Revenue announced that it was adopting additional language in the “Conduct of Establishment” section of the Colorado Liquor Rules, declaring that a venue that already holds a liquor license cannot apply for a license to serve marijuana.