OLEAN — New York state’s Medical Marijuana Program started quietly on Jan. 7.

It’s not clear whether any Cattaraugus County physicians have yet registered with the program, or whether any county residents have been certified elsewhere to participate in the medical marijuana program.

“It’s a hot topic,” said Dr. Kevin Watkins, Cattaraugus County public health director.

Regulated by the state Department of Health, “medical marijuana is another weapon in the arsenal for pain relief,” Watkins said. “We are just going to continue to monitor it.”

New York, he said, “is the 23rd state in the country to allow medical marijuana for patients seeking some sort of pain relief. It is being done in a very conservative way.”

The clusters of chairs and small tables in the waiting area bring to mind a hotel lobby. The counters and islands in the pharmacy make the well-lit, airy space look more like the interior of a high-end jewelry store than a place to buy medication.

When and how many patients will be buzzed into the interior of the Columbia Care of New York at Eastman Business Park and make their own analogy is anybody’s guess — including the head of the company.

“Just to give you a little background, we managed the first dispensary that opened in the Washington, D.C.,” Columbia Care chief executive officer Nicholas Vita said Thursday morning. “We were open for a month before we saw our first patient. That’s not unexpected.”

This January, New York became the 23rd state to legalize the use of prescription cannabis. For this video, TIME went inside one of the first medical marijuana dispensaries, Vireo Health, which has one of the state’s five licenses to grow and sell medical cannabis.

Researchers at Strong Memorial Hospital are involved in clinical trials with a drug derived from cannabis.

The Investigational New Drug is called Epidiolex, and it's different from medical marijuana available through the state's dispensaries. It's almost pure Cannabidiol, which is a chemical compound in cannabis thought to help reduce seizures.

Currently, URMC is involved in an FDA-approved double blind study to test the effectiveness of the drug, the results of which should be available in about a year.

Researchers are now planning for another study, called a Compassionate Use Study, to test the side effects of Epidiolex, and how it reacts with other medications. This study will involved children and young adults.

Oliver Miller has become the face of the fight for New York state’s medical marijuana law. Now 16, he suffered an in utero stroke that affected his brain stem and left him with myriad disabilities, the most dangerous of which is severe epilepsy, or seizure disorder.

On his bad days, his seizures number more than 100. His desperate parents tried just about everything to find some relief for him. He’s currently on a cocktail of four drugs, plus an IV infusion every three weeks.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York's Department of Health is sponsoring research on the use of a pharmaceutical-grade medical cannabis drug to treat children with severe epilepsy.

The department announced the studies Wednesday. They'll be open to 100 children and young adults whose epilepsy has resisted other treatments.

The drug, known as Epidiolex, is not yet FDA approved but is the subject of ongoing drug trials. It will be available free of charge to qualifying patients.

The five medical centers participating in the studies are Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo, New York Langone Medical Center, Mount Sinai Beth Israel and the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Here's the latest research on pot and drinking, pot and opiate dependency, pot and IQ, pot and migraines, and pot and obesity.

Scientific discoveries are published almost daily rebuking  the federal government’s contention that cannabis is a highly dangerous substance lacking therapeutic efficacy. But most of these findings are relegated to obscure, peer-reviewed journals and, therefore, often go unnoticed by the major media and the general public. Here are five new cannabis-centric studies that warrant mainstream attention.

Consumers Seldom Combine Marijuana With Alcohol

New Rochelle, NY, January 21, 2016--Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research the new peer-reviewed open access journal fromMary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, announces a new partnership with The International Cannabinoid Research Society. This new collaboration promotes the missions of the Journal and Society to further the advancement of cannabis and cannabinoid-related research.

Two days before the state’s medical marijuana program started, the section of frequently asked questions on the Department of Health’s medical marijuana assured visitors “(t)he Department of Health will soon post a list of those registered physicians who consent to providing their names and specialties.”

Apparently, not to the public.

To be literal, the original FAQ did not say to whom the list would be posted. You, like me, probably figured it’d be posted on www.health.ny.gov/regulations/medical_marijuana/. That way, we could look up which physicians had completed online training, registered with the state and could certify those of us who met stringent criteria to buy the medication.

Medical cannabis dispensaries can’t read your brain to find out what pot strains you prefer, but one tech company might soon change that.

Emerging cannabis tech company PotBotics has found a way to use existing electroencephalogram (EEG) technology to make medical marijuana recommendations best suited for the specific medical conditions of users, the New York Daily News reports.

EEG technology employs the use of electrodes placed on areas of the scalp to detect any sort of abnormalities in brain activity.