The country is the second in Africa to permit cannabis cultivation, but months after approval there’s been little uptake by farmers and no scientific proposals.

Epidiolex, a cannabis-derived medicine for epilepsy, will prompt federal regulatory changes that could crack open access to study the plant.

NIDA pharmacologist Michael Baumann explains how “unscrupulous vendors” hijacked compounds used in neuroscience and turned them into dangerous drugs.

Patients will be able to access the drug with a prescription, and there are no plans to allow for recreational use.

The coming legalization of recreational marijuana is already increasing funding for studies, but regulations on such research have been slow to change.

As the CBD-based medication enters the market, the agency promises a crackdown on producers of cannabidiol products that make unproven claims.

Marijuana ointments as cancer treatments remain a distant prospect. 

Researchers suspect the source of the toxins may be some of the state’s 50,000 or so marijuana farms.

And the same endocannabinoid system that translates marijuana's buzz-inducing compounds into a high plays crucial roles in health and disease outside the brain.