POT STRAIN MAY BE TOO POTENT

A strain of government-certified marijuana is extremely potent but
difficult to grow, and may eventually be abandoned as too much trouble,
officials say.

The flowering tops or buds of the strain, grown for Health Canada in a
vacant mine section in Flin Flon, Man., contain between 20 and 25 per cent
THC, the most active ingredient of marijuana, laboratory results show.

American tests on marijuana seized by U.S. police forces suggest ordinary
street dope averages about five per cent THC, with sinsemilla -- considered
the champagne of weed -- averaging about 10 per cent.

But the highly potent Flin Flon strain -- one of two official strains that
together produced a crop of 244 kilograms last fall -- is anemic and tough
to grow successfully.

"We don't want high-maintenance plants," said Cindy Cripps-Prawak, chief of
Ottawa's medical marijuana program. "It's still unclear to me whether or
not that is going to be the strain we're going to continue with."

The second strain is producing a respectable THC content as well, between
13 and 18 per cent in its buds. Those levels are more in line with the
needs of clinical trials, said Cripps-Prawak.

Health Canada has said it will not make any of its marijuana available
directly to needy patients because it first wants to see scientific proof
about whether the drug is effective.

Instead, patients approved by Health Canada must either grow their own
marijuana or have someone else grow it for them.

If Health Canada agrees to abandon its high-potency strain, it will be
another setback in a problem-plagued project to grow standardized Canadian
marijuana for medical trials that will determine whether the drug offers
any benefits -- such as pain relief -- to the chronically ill.