Quote: North Korea has awarded high honors to a herbal medicine for constipation with marijuana as an active ingredient, the communist state's official news agency said on Thursday.

The concoction of rhubarb, cannabis sativa (marijuana) and elecampane "gives no harmful effect to internal organs but activates their functions and promotes digestion by dissolving bile well," the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

KCNA said the government had awarded a top science prize this year to the medicine made by Pyongyang Hospital of Koryo Medicine after it "completely cured" 97 percent of the thousands of constipated patients who tried it.