CANADA STARTS LEGAL MARIJUANA SUPPLY

Reuters

CALGARY Canada -- A mine deep in the tundra of remote northern Canada has
long yielded a steady supply of copper and zinc, but it will soon produce a
very different bounty -- the country's first supply of legal marijuana.

Canada's health ministry has awarded a $3.8 million (U.S. dollars) contract
to a firm that will grow marijuana for medicinal purposes in its lab in the
mine, several hundred meters below a lake near the town of Flin Flon in
northern Manitoba.

"The idea here is we can use these underground growth-chamber environments
for the production of bio-pharmaceutical plants that really require two
things," Brent Zettl, president of winning bidder Prairie Plant Systems,
said today.

"One is genetic containment, and the second is security -- so the
two-legged biological controls are held out."

Translation: This will be one tough pot garden to raid.

The Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based company's five-year contract is the first
ever awarded by Health Canada under a program to gain a steady supply of
standardized-quality marijuana for research and therapeutic purposes.

Bidders were required to pass a screening conducted by officials from
Canada's health, agriculture and public works departments, as well as the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Research has shown the drug to be effective in alleviating symptoms of
debilitating diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, and Canadians
have recently been able to apply to the health minister for an exemption
from possession laws.

However, there has been no legal way to acquire the marijuana.

In early December, an Alberta judge gave a multiple sclerosis patient in
Calgary the green light to grow his own, saying that the current
legislation was "absurd" without any legal means to get the ganja.

"Canada is acting compassionately by allowing the use of marijuana by
people who are suffering from grave and debilitating illness," Health
Minister Allan Rock said in a statement.

"This marijuana will be made available to people participating in
structured research programs, and to authorized Canadians using it for
medical purposes who agree to provide information to my department for
monitoring and research purposes."

Zettl's company will work to attain consistent quality for its marijuana in
the mine. It will deliver at least some of it to government officials in
the form of cigarettes, he said.

Prairie Plant Systems will obtain the pot seeds from research authorities
in other countries with similar medical marijuana programs.

"We're required by law to get them from legal sources," he said.