California Assembly Bill 390 aims to legalize and tax marijuana. The bill goes a step further then the usual medicinal marijuana verbiage and focuses on the legalization of the drug for recreational use. The bill is sponsored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. The bill would legally allow adults over 21 to grow, possess and smoke marijuana freely. According NBC news in San Francisco, This is the first time in U.S. history any state legislative body has ever considered repealing marijuana prohibition, which has been in place since 1913. A vote on the bill will take place today.
The FDA recently voted in favor of pushing a new formulation of oxycodone hydrochloride for approval. The new OxyContin formula is more difficult to crush or dissolve which will hopefully make it harder to be used as a drug of abuse . The FDA recommended that Purdue Pharma's application for a new, resin-coated formulation should replace the original version, which has been on the market since 1996. Randall Flick, MD, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic who voted to recommend approval of the drug said, "Clearly the old formulation is worse than the new, although I think the difference is relatively small," Flick concluded, "Hardcore abusers are likely to devise new ways to break down the harder tablet or figure out which solvents will dissolve it fastest, within 'day or weeks' of the product's release on the market."