GOVERNMENT POT GROWER STUNG BY CRITICS

You can tell it stings. Brent Zettl has a degree in agriculture, for crying
out loud.

And to have his customers slagging his marijuana as second-rate shwag
(skunk, ditchweed, Flin Flon windowbox, whatever) wounds his professional
pride.

"If you knew how hard we've been working on this, the concerted efforts for
three years to come up with a consistent product, the pride we take in this
. you'd understand how we feel," Zettl said yesterday.

"We can make a product here as good as, or better than, anything grown
anywhere in the country. If Health Canada wants a more potent strain, all
they have to do is ask."

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Phillipe Lucas. The patients' rights
lobby Canadians for Safe Access, which Lucas heads, claimed this week to
have tested the Ottawa-sanctioned product coming out of Zettl's Prairie
Plant Systems operation in Manitoba, and found it wanting.

"I've tried it myself, and I can safely say it's not up to snuff," said
Lucas. His lobby reports two certified labs in B.C. found levels of the
active ingredient THC in government weed of roughly 3% (federal specs
require a 10% THC content) and low levels of lead and arsenic.

"So users have to smoke more of it in order for it to be effective, which
means they're taking in more of these (toxins). We feel the federal
government has bumbled this operation."

Lucas isn't the only one complaining. The handful of patients with Ottawa's
permission to buy Zettl's product for therapeutic purposes - at $150 an
ounce, a little over half the local street price of $280 an ounce - aren't
crazy about the quality either.

Jari Dvorak, an HIV patient from Toronto who smokes marijuana to stimulate
his appetite, complains that the stuff he's been buying from the feds is
light on buzz value.

"I think it's overpriced," he said yesterday. "I used to be able to take
just a few puffs before breakfast, you know? And that would be all I needed.

"With this stuff, I have to smoke half a joint to get the same result. And
you can tell they've ground up a lot of stem and leaf in with the buds. But
what can I do? I don't want to buy from criminals."

Zettl denies all: he insists the Flin Flon product is monitored closely to
maintain a THC content within a point either way of 10%.

Ottawa agrees - a Health Canada spokesman said yesterday the department is
quite satisfied with the Flin Flon product and has no plans to ask for changes.

Zettl also calls the claim of lead and arsenic contamination "tantamount to
slander."

"They won't identify the labs that allegedly did the testing," he said.

"We use no chemicals, apart from fertilizers. We have 10,000 varieties,
grown from seeds obtained from the RCMP. Some of these plants have THC
contents as high as 30%."

Zettl acknowledges the Flin Flon product is "milled" along with non-bud
material like stem and leaf, a process he said is necessary to keep the THC
content at 10% and to allow strict control of dosage. This is medicine,
after all.

Zettl said he thinks the attacks on his company's product are part of a
"hidden agenda" by so-called "organic" growers and makers of ancillary
ganja merchandise (pipes, bongs, T-shirts) to push the feds out of the weed
market before decriminalization takes hold.

"Check out the marijuana Web sites; look at the amount of advertising," he
said.

"There are people out there who don't want us to succeed, who don't want
any competition."

Lucas denies any commercial motive, although he makes no secret of the
contempt organic marijuana growers feel for Ottawa's experimental grow-op.

"We were expecting a low-grade product," he said. "We advised Ottawa to go
organic, to take advice from experienced growers. They didn't listen."

The worry here is that low-grade medical marijuana might have nasty health
effects. Marijuana smoke is rich in cancer-causing hydrocarbons: someone
using low-THC weed might have to smoke a lot more of it to get the proper
effect.

And medical users who decide to go with street weed will have to take their
chances.

Det. Darren Derko of the Edmonton police-RCMP Green Team said street weed
is frequently contaminated with the massive amounts of pesticides used to
control insects.

"Spider mites," he said. "We're always seizing gallons of pesticides when
we bust grow-ops."