Andrew Freedman is Colorado’s Director of Marijuana Coordination, which he jokes is a job title that stirs envy amongst his law school friends, even if it came with a healthy pay cut. In his panel “Colorado & Washington: Successes and Challenges from the Frontier of Post-Prohibition America,” Freedman tackles three of the hottest and often controversial issues facing the industry: banking, edibles, and the Governor’s youth prevention campaign.

On banking: “We want the cash off the streets. We want a banking solution.”

We passed a bill last session that allows for the formation of basically a credit union style co-op that can go straight to the federal reserve and ask for access without having to get federal insurance which seems to be a roadblock.

We’re pushing forward for credit unions to create marijuana only credit unions… We want the cash off the streets, we want a banking solution and so we are helping anybody advocate for any position out there.

On edibles: “How do we make it intuitive [for consumers] so they know how much they’re eating.”

We’re working on edibles pretty hard right now, and there’s been a task force put together for that with representatives from industry, public health, and concerned citizens.

…There’s two standards in there, one like always is how we try prevent accidental ingestion by young people, and the second one being how do we make it — taking in mind the consumer who’s walking in without any sort of culture, public education — how do we make it intuitive when they are having one serving so they know how much they’re eating absent any budtender telling them how much they should split it into.

On youth prevention: “It’s [incumbent] on all of us to make sure it stays out of the hands of people under the age of 21.”

Over the coming months I hope we will come out with our youth prevention campaign which won’t be about the legalization debate, it will be about teenage use and what it does for teenagers. We’ve been working closely with industry on that to get feedback on where it goes.

I think everyone can understand one of the things that really could stop legalization in its tracks is if we see a dramatic increase in youth use from it, not to say that’s where we see the data going but that it’s [incumbent] on all of us to make sure it stays out of the hands of people under the age of 21.