TULSA, Okla. - The teenager had pink cheeks from the cold and a matter-of-fact tone as she explained why she had started using methamphetamine after becoming homeless last year.

"Having nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat - that's where meth comes into play," said the girl, 17, who asked to be identified by her nickname, Rose. "Those things aren't a problem if you're using."

She stopped two months ago, she said, after smoking so much meth over a 24-hour period that she hallucinated and nearly jumped off a bridge. Deaths associated with meth use are climbing here in Oklahoma and in many other states, an alarming trend for a nation battered by the opioid epidemic, and one that public health officials are struggling to fully explain.

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The medical marijuana "Unity Bill" that sets up a basic legal framework for the implementation of State Question 788 will take effect Thursday.

Nearly three dozen other new laws will also take effect this week.

Here's a look at some of the new laws.

'Unity Bill'

Also known as the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana and Patient Protection Act, House Bill 2612 sets up a framework for regulating Oklahoma's medical marijuana industry.

The lengthy bill that was a compromise between legislators and those in the medical marijuana industry sets guidelines for marijuana testing, tax collections, seed-to-sale product tracking, packaging, employment and more.

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A year after medical marijuana became legal in Oklahoma, state lawmakers and marijuana advocates seem to have found a balance in implementing State Question 788 and moving the industry forward into the near future.

Sweeping legislation -- the result of a major compromise between legislators and cannabis advocates -- to regulate the medical marijuana industry will go into effect later this month.

Meanwhile, there are whispers of an initiative petition to put the question of legalizing recreational marijuana to a statewide vote, which could shake up Oklahoma's fledgling marijuana industry and the new regulatory framework.

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Creation of a Cannabis Commission to regulate medical marijuana in the state was approved by the Oklahoma House of Representatives on Thursday night with no votes to spare.

House Bill 3468, by Rep. John Jordan, R-Yukon, sets up an independent commission that would be activated if voters approve State Question 788 on June 26. That question would legalize medical uses of medical marijuana, although opponents say its broad construction would essentially make policing recreational use impossible.

"If you're for full-on recreational marijuana, this is not your bill," Jordan said in explaining the bill.

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LINDSAY, Okla - Danny Daniels, an evangelical Christian in the rural Oklahoma town of Lindsay, is reliably conservative on just about every political issue.

The 45-year-old church pastor is anti-abortion, voted for President Donald Trump and is a member of the National Rifle Association who owns an AR-15 rifle. He also came of age during the 1980s and believed in the anti-drug mantra that labeled marijuana as a dangerous gateway drug.

But his view on marijuana changed as his pastoral work extended into hospice care and he saw patients at the end of their lives benefiting from the use of cannabis.

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A medical marijuana activist in Oklahoma says the county sheriff forcibly escorted him out of a forum, but the sheriff says he thinks the scuffle was an "orchestrated" deal with an attempt to rattle law enforcement.

Chip Paul, co-founder of Oklahomans for Health, said he was attending a forum about the proposed legislation for legalizing medical marijuana when he was forced out by Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton. The organization is the official proponent of legalizing medical cannabis in Oklahoma through State Question 788.

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On Nov. 21, 2012, Sheila Bartels walked out of the Sunshine Medical Center in Oklahoma with a prescription for a "horrifyingly excessive" cocktail of drugs capable of killing her several times over.

A short time later, she was at a pharmacy, receiving what drug addicts call "the holy trinity" of prescription drugs: the powerful painkiller Hydrocodone, the anti-anxiety medication Xanax and a muscle relaxant known as Soma.

In total, pharmacists handed her 510 pills that day - all legal, because she had a prescription with the signature of her doctor, Regan Ganoung Nichols, scrawled at the bottom, according to a probable cause affidavit.

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