FDA approves country’s first medicine made from marijuana

Epidiolex, first medicine made from marijuana to be approved by FDA.

Stat News, June 25, 2018

by Andrew Joseph

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the country’s first drug derived from marijuana, a medication that treats two rare and devastating forms of epilepsy.

The drug, GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex, is made of cannabidiol, or CBD, a component of marijuana that does not give users a high. It is given as an oil, and in clinical trials, it was shown to reduce the number of seizures by about 40 percent in patients with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes. READ MORE.