BAD VIBES ON LATEST MEDICAL POT

OTTAWA--Some patients are spurning a new batch of government-certified
marijuana, dismissing Health Canada claims it's a 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 in an old
Manitoba mine shaft on contract for Health Canada, began shipping a
second batch May 21. Users complained the first batch last summer was
too powdery, and far less potent than the package claim of THC (the
primary active ingredient) at 10.2 per cent. Health Canada says the
new batch is around 12 per cent THC, has fewer twigs and more
flowering tops, making it a purer smoke.