ROCK'S GONE TO POT

Marijuana ruling due today

OTTAWA -- Call it Pot Canada -- as in marijuana.

Health Minister Allan Rock is expected to make history today with an
anticipated announcement that Health Canada will officially begin growing
its own pot plantations.

Sources say Rock will reveal today he is in the process of finalizing a
business plan to develop a government-controlled dope farm in Canada.

He intends to ensure Canadians who need marijuana for medicinal purposes
have a 'made in Canada' brand, sources say.

As well, sources say Rock will grant two exemptions under the Controlled
Drugs and Substances Act permitting two individuals to grow and use
marijuana.

The government has received more than 30 applications from Canadians wanting
permission to legally smoke dope to ease their illness pains.

Toronto AIDS sufferer Jim Wakeford is expected to receive one of the
exemptions.

Wakeford won the legal right to grow and smoke marijuana under a
constitutional exemption last month granted by an Ontario Superior Court
judge.

The ruling criticized the federal government for its slowness in handling
applications for medicinal marijuana by dying patients.

Rock is expected to reveal details of clinical trials on the medicinal
benefits of marijuana use and spell out who will qualify to participate in
the trials when he tables a status report on the Medicinal Marijuana
Research Plan this morning.

But while Health Canada prepares its pot fields for planting, sources say
government officials will sanction the Community Research Initiative of
Toronto to go to Mississippi, the official pot growing capital of the U.S.,
to study its dope growing methods.

Mississippi is where all U.S. government scientific research on marijuana is
conducted.

Although the minister wants Canadians in need of dope for health reasons to
have their own domestic supply, he wants to be able to use U.S. marijuana
until it's ready for harvest.

As well, Rock is expected to announce Health Canada is negotiating to
conduct clinical trials with a British firm that makes a marijuana soup.

He wants to determine whether the soup-like drug relieves pain and nausea in
the terminally ill.

The soup is inhaled through a device similar to the inhalers used by asthma
sufferers.