CANADA'S CHANGING POT RULES BECOMING LOST IN THE HAZE

Why is Ottawa spending millions to grow dope at the bottom of a Manitoba
mine shaft when it's paying Vancouver Island Mounties to rip up and burn
tonnes of the same product?

What happens to medical marijuana clubs now that Cheech and Chong have
moved into the prime minister's office?

And is our federal government the only organization that could lose money
growing pot?

Just some of the questions to arise now that Health Canada has, ever so
reluctantly, come up with a court-ordered plan for distributing marijuana
to sick people.

This goes back to January, when an Ontario court ruled that if Ottawa was
going to allow medical marijuana, it had to provide a legal means for
licensed users to get their drugs. The judge gave Health Canada six months
to come up with a distribution system. An appeal of that decision is to be
heard July 29 but in the meantime, the six months is up. So Ottawa has come
up with a plan: It will sell sick people 30 seeds for $20, or 30-gram bags
of marijuana for $150.

The government grass will come from Flin Flon, Man., where it is being
grown in an abandoned mine by Prairie Plant Systems.

The government announced in 2000 that it would grow dope for research
purposes, but three years and several million dollars later, the only
clinical trial underway is a McGill University study of the effect of
smoked marijuana on neuropathic pain.

Meanwhile, Vancouver Island police are pulling up plants like chickweed,
with little hope of chasing down most of the growers whose pot pops up on
Crown land.

The stuff is everywhere. It's worse than zucchini. Parksville-based RCMP
alone tore out about 1,100 plants in a half-dozen locations last week.

So why is the government paying millions to grow marijuana in Manitoba when
it has all the free stuff it needs right here?

Quality control, says Health Canada's Jirina Vlk. "It's a research-grade,
standardized product." Can't do scientific experiments if the potency of
the pot is all over the map. The mineshaft marijuana has a steady THC
content of 10 per cent.

Too weak, says Ted Smith, founder of Victoria's Cannabis Buyers Club, which
sells marijuana to those who can provide a doctor's diagnosis of illness.
Government dope would leave smokers hacking and coughing.

"We wouldn't even sell that at our club," says Smith. "Our members don't
want to smoke a lot of pot. They don't want to smoke three or four grams to
get out of pain."

The Victoria club charges $25 for 31/2 grams of pot with a THC content
Smith estimates at 12 to 14 per cent.

"I would love for the government to provide better, less expensive
cannabis," says Smith. "We would fold."

In the meantime, the club's not going anywhere, at least not for now.

This is where it gets weird (or weirder). The government wants doctors to
be the distributors, but the docs are balking. (Most of them don't even
have tattoos or pit bulls, for goodness sake.) None had applied for a
Health Canada dealers' permit as of Friday.

Meanwhile, medical-marijuana clubs have been selling dope with a degree of
impunity because of the murkiness of the law, particularly since that
Ontario decision.

They have been able to claim they provide the access to marijuana denied by
Ottawa. Smith says Ottawa's establishment of a distribution system
validates the clubs' activities. But the authorities may see things
differently now that there is a government-sanctioned alternative.

And it has to be noted only 582 Canadians have been authorized to use
marijuana for medicinal purposes. They fall into three categories: people
with less than a year to live; patients enduring pain and certain other
symptoms associated with a group of specific conditions -- cancer, AIDS,
multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, epilepsy and severe arthritis;
people with other serious illnesses where conventional treatments have failed.

Medical-marijuana groups have looser rules. The Victoria club alone has
1,200 names on file.

Health Minister Anne McLellan has hinted strongly that Ottawa will get out
of the dope-dealing business if it wins the appeal of the court ruling that
forced access to medical marijuana. Indeed, she is pretty skeptical of the
very idea of prescription pot, saying she has yet to see scientific proof
that it does any good at all.

After all this time, money and controversy, it could all still go up in smoke.