Assemblyman Jim Wood is attempting to clear the way for Californians to use the first federally approved medicine made from marijuana, removing a legal barrier that could stand in the way of an expected surge in cannabis-based pharmaceuticals.

Wood, a Santa Rosa Democrat who chairs the Assembly Health Committee, authored a bill that would make a drug approved Monday by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of two rare and severe childhood-onset epilepsies legal for California physicians to prescribe.

The two disorders—Lennox- Gestaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome—afflict fewer than 45,000 Americans, but experts expect the drug, Epidiolex, will be prescribed for other types of epilepsy, Wood said.

Epidiolex, produced by GW Pharmaceuticals, is the first approved medicine that “contains a purified drug substance derived from marijuana,” the FDA said in a statement.

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State regulators have given up for now on a contentious rule requiring a hefty fee from medical marijuana suppliers.

The Department of Health, which regulates the drug through its Office of Medical Marijuana Use, had first proposed in April a “supplemental licensing fee” of $174,844 from each provider.

But the office on Monday, without explanation, announced it was withdrawing the proposed fee from further consideration.

It already had drawn a legal challenge from Liberty Health Sciences, a state-licensed “medical marijuana treatment center” (MMTC).

Its lawyer had argued the state set the fee too high.

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A small but growing segment of the medical marijuana market could be kept off shelves in Colorado as government regulators and the cannabis industry scramble to figure out how to safely produce and monitor cannabis nasal sprays, inhalers and suppositories.

Dubbed "non-conforming products" by the state Marijuana Enforcement Division and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, MMJ products that enter the body by inhaler or other means of nasal, vaginal or rectal administration were taken off dispensary shelves July 1 after emergency rules were adopted by the MED. The timetable for their return is still up for debate.

The rule changes were an attempt to get a regulatory grip on new, pharmaceutical-like deliveries of cannabis; products such as THC-infused nasal sprays and suppositories are being used to treat seizures, muscle spasms, chronic pain and other severe medical conditions. The new rules aren't permanent, however: The MED held an official rule-making hearing on Monday, July 9, when a working group of industry members, government and public-health officials, attorneys and other pot stakeholders refined the language before its final rollout, currently set for January 1, 2019.

Although cannabis-infused nasal spray and suppositories may enter the body much as pharmaceuticals do, they're not tested and monitored by federal health and safety agencies; any MMJ product (besides GW Pharma's CBD drug, Epidiolex) falls outside the purview of the Food and Drug Administration, thanks to the plant's federally illegal status. This presents a health and safety risk to the public, according to Mike Van Dyke, director of the CDPHE's Environmental Epidemiology, Occupational Health and Toxicology Branch.

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TISHOMINGO, Okla. (KXII) - "You have to make a choice, you're either going to smoke or you're going to shoot," U.S. Law Shield State Manager Joshua Reil said.

Since the medical marijuana bill passed last month, Reil says his organization is working to ensure current (and future) gun owners understand the law.

"The law states that any mind altering drug (marijuana's a mind altering drug) you cannot be under the influence of it, at all,"Reil said.

"The voters of Oklahoma have determined that this is a medicine," Attorney Zack Simmons said. I do not believe that people who are prescribed medicine by a doctor should be disqualified from possessing a firearm, as long as they're taking that medication as prescribed."

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