State lawmakers are scheduled to convene a special session on Monday, September 16, to amend the state’s nascent medical cannabis access law.

Specifically, lawmakers are seeking to revise the law so that public health departments are no longer responsible for the overseeing of the distribution of medical cannabis products. Instead, legislators are proposing that regulators license up to 12 privately-owned dispensaries throughout the state.

CBD edibles and vapes spiked with a variety of synthetic marijuana compounds have found their way to consumers in Louisiana, Maryland and nearly a dozen other states, according to a nationwide Associated Press investigation into unregulated cannabidiol products. Synthetic marijuana, often marketed as K2 or Spice, has been linked to mass hospitalizations and other health emergencies across the U.S. and Europe.

Medical cannabis advocates have been talking with legislative leaders about getting rid of a requirement that buds and leaves be packaged in "blister packs."

"What we’re looking at is maybe altering the way that blister pack would be, in order to make it specific to how that particular dose would be most efficiently packaged, not cause any impurities, allow it to be given to a dose-specific element with a patient," Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City, told FOX 13 in a recent interview. "There could be some tweaking on how that bubble pack looks, what it looks like and how it’s used."

Utah legislators were moving Thursday to scrap a planned state-run medical marijuana dispensary system after county attorneys said it would put public employees at risk of being prosecuted under federal drug laws.

Under the revised plan being written by Republican Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers, medical cannabis would instead be distributed through as many as 12 private dispensaries.

The changes to Utah’s medical marijuana law would have to be approved in a special session.

Over the last couple years, medical marijuana in Utah has been a hot and controversial subject. In what has become a protracted, back-and-forth process between state legislators, medical marijuana advocates, and other powerful players in the state, Utah’s medical marijuana program continues to undergo dramatic changes.

Now, state lawmakers are preparing to make another significant change. Specifically, they said they will soon eliminate a proposal to distribute medical cannabis through state and county health departments. Instead, medical marijuana in the state will be sold through a network of privately owned and operated dispensaries.

A potentially explosive report detailing the distribution of pharmaceutical opiates reveals a disturbing connection between Utah’s anti-medical cannabis movement and the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, one of the state’s leading anti-legalization policymakers is also one of the state’s biggest seller of opiates.

The revelation has sparked outrage among medical marijuana patients and advocates, and has intensified ongoing tensions surrounding Utah’s controversial medical marijuana laws.

The wide metal barn on the Utah alfalfa farm owned by Russell and Diane Jones will host their youngest son’s wedding next month. By September, they hope the structure will be full of marijuana plants.

The Joneses are fourth-generation farmers, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and among 81 applicants for one of a handful of coveted spots as a licensed medical marijuana grower in conservative Utah.

Though leaders of their faith once opposed the bid to legalize medical marijuana, Russell Jones says he researched the drug’s pain-relieving benefits as he battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Now he and his wife want to be part of an emerging industry that some doubted would ever come to the state.

A recent report reveals that 52 people in the state of Utah fell sick after using falsely labeled, synthetic CBD products.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered that these products were sold between October 2018 and January 2019 at various smoke shops around the Salt Lake City area. CBD oil is legal for people with epilepsy in Utah, but because of limited regulations there is currently no quality control system in place – as is the situation in most of the country.

In what could be one of the most convincing financial arguments for the legalization of recreational marijuana yet, the state of Utah has announced that cannabis cultivators will face a licensing fee from between $75,000 to $100,000.

“The program has to be self-sufficient and pay for itself,” said Andrew Rigby, who is program manager for the state’s marijuana industry. Utah’s Department of Agriculture and Food, the cannabis industry’s regulatory body, has estimated that legalizing medical marijuana will cost the state over $563,000 in 2020. All the same, at the current fee rates, applications and licensing has been forecasted to bring in $1.1 million.

There are two reasons why Russ Belville thinks Idaho has a shot at legalizing medical marijuana in 2020: Utah and Oklahoma.

In 2018, both conservative strongholds approved medical marijuana laws.

"We are very confident that if it makes it on the ballot, it passes," says Belville, spokesman for the Idaho Cannabis Coalition. "The difficulty is in getting it on the ballot. Idaho has some of the most arduous signature requirements. But once we get it on the ballot, we're confident it will pass."

The coalition filed a petition with the Idaho Secretary of State's Office to include a medical marijuana initiative on the 2020 ballot and expects to start collecting signatures before the end of the week, Belville says.