A red herring is “something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue.” Sad to say the marijuana industry has more than its fair share of red herrings, including the ten that are most prevalent these days:

DENVER, COLORADO -- Andrew Freedman, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's point person on marijuana policy, recently sat down with The Oregonian/OregonLive to talk about the lessons Colorado offers Oregon and other states grappling with how to regulate marijuana.

Freedman, a Harvard educated lawyer, talked about how the state has confronted challenges posed by the fast-growing marijuana-infused edibles industry, which last year accounted for about 45 percent of sales in the recreational market.

Here are five takeaways from the interview:

What constitutes a serving of marijuana? What's the effect of marijuana on breastfed infants, pregnant women, children and teens? How should Oregon address marijuana use among teens?

A new Oregon Health Authority  committee hopes to take up such public health questions as the state drafts rules for a new regulated marijuana industry that's set to launch next year. The agency plans to convene a Marijuana Scientific Advisory Committee to lend expertise to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, the agency charged with regulating recreational cannabis.

If you build it, who will come?

Verabis (www.verabis.net), a primary research firm that focuses on the cannabis industry, can help you get to the bottom of this question and more. And they’ve got some data about the industry to share.

Did you know that 70% of cannabis enthusiasts use cannabis product once or more a week? And four out of five of these people consume cannabis at least once per day. Verabis has seen significant differences in product preferences when it comes to the gender split. For example, women are more drawn to mint and gum than men. Men are more likely to trust vaporizers. Moreover, one in four say their use of cannabis will increase in the coming year. Are you ready?

High Times magazine’s New York-rooted editor-in-chief Dan Skye has spent plenty of time in Colorado researching and photographing the state’s medical and recreational systems, but his current, pre-Cannabis Cup trip to the state has been uncommonly eye-opening.

“The Colorado cannabis industry is an economic miracle,” Skye said Monday from a stop in Pueblo, where he’s meeting cannabis business owners and reporting on the state’s first-of-its-kind legalization. “Everyone in the United States is following Colorado’s lead.”

A  worker at a Louisville, Colorado, dispensary handles bags of marijuana delivered March 27 by CannaRabbit. Couriers do more than carry pot for the state's network of more than 800 growers, manufacturers, dispensers and laboratories. The industry remains mostly cash only as federally chartered banks have been hesitant to extend loans for trade that U.S. authorities may see as against the law.

At a farm in the foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, Corey Young tucks his client's marijuana into a shoebox-sized container in an unmarked white van and heads out on the road.

"We don't want to be going through a small town and have someone see bins in the back," said Young, a founder of courier service CannaRabbit. "We do not want to stick out at all."

MBank, the small Oregon-based financial institution that has serviced the cannabis industry since last year, told Marijuana Business Daily that it will close all of its accounts with marijuana companies in the next two months.

Jef Baker, the CEO and president of MBank, said the cost and time spent on compliance is too much for the Gresham, Oregon-based community bank to handle. The company – which quickly became one of the largest banks serving the marijuana industry – has about 70 to 75 accounts with cannabis businesses, Baker said. Most of them are in Oregon, though a few are in Washington State.

In 2011, the only place you could buy a pound of pot online was Silk Road, an illegal marketplace labeled by the media as the “Amazon of drugs.”

In 2015, there’s a website run by veteran commodity traders where Colorado growers and retailers can trade cannabis online – legally.

The Denver-based company Amercanex launched its online marketplace last summer, and it has plans to expand outside of Colorado by the end of 2015.

Retired Silicon Valley engineer Angelo Mallol, 56, turned out Sunday for a seminar on how to start a small business – in the pot trade.

He asked questions as instructor Gerry Bedore of the Cannabis Career Institute spoke about emerging opportunities for entrepreneurs wanting to enter California’s medical marijuana market and cash in on a likely 2016 state ballot initiative to legalize recreational pot use.

The Cannabis Career Institute, founded by a Los Angeles marijuana activist and pot deliveryman known as “The Cannabis Warrior,” held a daylong Sacramento program on how to open cannabis businesses, from niche bakeries and organic gardens to marijuana distribution services.

A year of debate, a slew of labeling regulations and multiple educational campaigns have not been effective in answering a critical question surrounding marijuana-infused edible products: How do you stop a consumer from eating too much?