LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The Natural State is weeding out a high number of applicants for limited spots in the budding medical marijuana business. 

The Alcoholic Beverage Control received a total of 322 submissions for the state's five cultivation facility and 32 dispensary licenses.

STATE BY STATE: Arkansas Cannabis News

"We knew people would wait until the last day but 200 different applications in the last day? That is not something we had in mind," said Scott Hardin, the ABC spokesperson. "When people were sleeping outside in lawn chairs overnight, that was a pretty good indication that it was going to be busy. You normally don't see people fighting to get into government buildings in the morning."

Hardin said 224 applications were to sell medical marijuana while 98 were to grow.

The total application fees came to $3.15 million, $1.68 million for dispensaries and $1.47 million for cultivation facilities.

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Citing legal concerns, the University of Maryland’s School of Pharmacy has canceled plans to offer training for those who work in the medical marijuana industry.

After consulting with the Maryland attorney general’s office, the university asked pharmacy school officials to cancel the classes, a university spokesman said.

STATE BY STATE: Maryland Cannabis News

While marijuana has been legalized for medical purposes in Maryland, 28 other states and the District of Columbia, the administration of President Donald J. Trump has not indicated how it will handle enforcement of the federal marijuana law, which still classifies the drug alongside heroin and LSD.

“If there’s any question of the law, they are often consulted,” said Alex Likowski, a spokesman for the University of Maryland, Baltimore. “Regarding medical cannabis, even though Maryland and many other states have approved it, it’s still illegal under U.S. law.”

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Last November, California voters approved a ballot measure to legalize marijuana. Now, the state's lawmakers are formally calling on the federal government to reclassify cannabis.

"The Legislature urges the Congress of the United States to pass a law to reschedule marijuana or cannabis and its derivatives from a Schedule I drug to an alternative schedule, therefore allowing the legal research and development of marijuana or cannabis for medical use," reads a joint resolution approved by the California Assembly on Sept. 14 with a vote of 60 to 10.

RELATED: U.S. Senator Cory Gardner Backs Legislation to Ease the Way for Medical Marijuana Research

The Controlled Substance Act's Schedule I -- the most restrictive category -- is supposed to be reserved for drugs with no medical value and a high potential for abuse. Researchers have long complained that marijuana's classification there creates additional hurdles that don't exist for studies on other substances.

The California resolution, which previously passed the state Senate by a margin of 34 to two, also calls for changing federal law to allow for "the legal commerce of marijuana or cannabis so that businesses dealing with marijuana or cannabis can use traditional banks or financial institutions for their banking needs, which would result in providing a legal vehicle for those businesses to pay their taxes."

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BATON ROUGE, LA. - Louisiana State University has completed its contract with the company that will grow medical marijuana for the school and said Monday the drug is expected to reach patients by the middle of next year.

Las Vegas-based GB Sciences is the first of only two producers of medical marijuana planned in Louisiana, through a deal with the LSU AgCenter. The company will start renovating its planned production facility immediately, according to a statement from the AgCenter.

STATE BY STATE: Louisiana Cannabis News

Lawmakers agreed to a framework for dispensing medical marijuana in 2015, but only allowed the agricultural centers at LSU and Southern University to grow the product. Southern is expected to choose a vendor to run its program Friday.

The law will eventually get medicinal-grade marijuana to people with cancer, a severe form of cerebral palsy, seizure disorders, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy and other diseases. Under the law, marijuana can be available in medicinal oils, pills, sprays, topical applications and other forms, but cannot be sold in a form that can be smoked.

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