FDA approves country’s first medicine made from marijuana
The FDA approved the country’s first drug derived from marijuana that treats two rare and devastating forms of epilepsy on Monday. The drug, GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex, is made of cannabidiol (CBD), a component of marijuana that does not produce a high. It’s given as an oil and was shown to reduce the number of seizures by about 40% in patients with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb took this event as an opportunity to remind the U.S. that properly evaluating ingredients in marijuana can lead to important medical therapies and that the FDA is committed to this kind of research and development.
