BATON ROUGE - There is a perfectly legal stash of marijuana inside an LSU Ag facility near the main campus. It was transported from Nevada for research in Louisiana.

"It's tiny little pieces of plant tissue that if you didn't know what it was you wouldn't know what it was," said research associate professor Ted Gauthier.

The research focuses on growing and storing the plant in a controlled environment. It's a step in LSU's therapeutic marijuana program.

Investment company GB Sciences provided the samples from it's Nevada grow house. The company is constructing a grow operation in south Baton Rouge for LSU Ag Center.

The marijuana will be processed into CBD oil which is now a legal therapeutic product in Louisiana for a handful of ailments. LSU hopes to have the first crop of Louisiana marijuana ready by Fall.

Louisiana is one of the first states to allow its public universities to conduct research on the therapeutic properties of the drug.

"I think a lot of places are looking at us to see how it's working out for us before they decide if they want to jump into it," said Gauthier.

Southern University Ag Center also has a therapeutic marijuana program and is organizing its own grow and research operations.