NEW POT STILL PITS, PATIENTS SAY

Second Batch Has 'Chemical Taste to It'

SOME patients are spurning a new batch of Flin Flon's medicinal
marijuana, dismissing Health Canada claims that it's a stronger,
better-quality smoke.

"It's no good," Marco Renda, 45, said yesterday from his home in
Dundalk, Ont. "I took two puffs and I put it out. It had a chemical
taste to it. It didn't taste right to me and it didn't burn properly.
It had no effect."

Prairie Plant Systems, which produces medical marijuana on contract
for Health Canada, began shipping a second batch of its product on May
21 after getting bad reviews about the initial harvest.

Users complained the first batch last summer was too dry and powdery,
and seemed far less potent than the package claim of THC content at
10.2 per cent. THC is the primary active ingredient in marijuana.

Health Canada says the new batch is 12 per cent THC, plus or minus 1.5
percentage points, has fewer leaves and twigs and more flowering tops,
making it a purer smoke.

Catherine Saunders, spokeswoman for Health Canada, said, "Informally,
I've been told... that the feedback (on the second batch) has been
positive overall." But Renda, who runs a website for medical users,
said that "whoever has tried it has given me the feedback that it's
not worth it."

And a spokesman for Canadians for Safe Access, a Victoria-based group
representing medical users, is warning all patients away from the new
dope, at least until it completes new lab tests.

"Nobody should smoke this stuff until we see test results ourselves
and until we get an explanation from Health Canada about what happened
with the first batch," Philippe Lucas said yesterday.

Prairie Plant Systems president Brent Zettl said if the pot is poor,
it's not his fault.

"I know we've been tarred and feathered... but we're following the
direction of Health Canada," Zettl said.

He said Prairie Plant will tender a bid for a new contract once the
old one, worth $5.75 million, expires on Dec. 31, 2005. And the pot
provider argued politics is playing a big role in criticism to dismiss
his product.

He said a group of B.C.-based patients who consistently say the Flin
Flon pot is the pits are actually trying to wrestle the contract away
and open the door to allow a British Columbia outfit to grow it instead.

Currently, Health Canada is rewriting regulations to allow a pilot
program in British Columbia to distribute government marijuana in pharmacies.

The department is also expected to put out to tender two new contracts
to grow government dope.

Win or lose, the pot contract doesn't make or break anything in Flin
Flon and if the contract dies, it won't matter, the mayor said.

"It hasn't been working out, " said the northern city's mayor, Dennis
Ballard.

In the four years since pot started sprouting in the northern city's
abandoned mine shafts, the town's hopes of cashing in on its
commercial value have faded to mere pipe dreams.

Flin Flon's mining shafts were once touted as growers' miracle
gardens. Roses and tomatoes raised in the sunless caverns were
matchless and when pot moved in, there were high hopes it would make
the town a mint.