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FDA approves country’s first medicine made from marijuana

Source: Kathy Young/AP

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 the number of seizures by about 40 percent in patients with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes.

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