HIGH-POTENCY, HARD-TO-GROW POT TOO MUCH TROUBLE, OTTAWA SAYS

A strain of government-certified marijuana is extremely potent but
difficult to grow and eventually will be abandoned as too much trouble,
officials say.

The flowering tops or buds of the strain, grown for Health Canada in an
otherwise-unused mine in Flin Flon, Man., contain 20 per cent to 25 per
cent THC, the most active ingredient of marijuana, laboratory results show.

U.S. tests on marijuana seized by U.S. police forces suggest that ordinary
street marijuana averages about 5-per-cent THC, with sinsemilla --
considered the champagne of weed -- averaging about 10 per cent.

But the highly potent Flin Flon strain -- one of two official strains that
together produced a crop of 244 kilograms last fall -- is tough to grow.

"We don't want high-maintenance plants," said Cindy Cripps-Prawak, chief of
Ottawa's medical-marijuana program. "It's still unclear to me whether or
not that is going to be the strain we're going to continue with."

The second strain is producing a respectable THC content, as well, with THC
content of 13 per cent to 18 per cent. Those levels are more in line with
the needs of clinical trials, Ms. Cripps-Prawak said.

"By and large, the researchers have told us they're interested more in the
lower-range plants, the lower-range THC content" of about 15 per cent or
less, she said in an interview from Ottawa.

Health Canada has said it will not make any of its marijuana available
directly to needy patients, because it wants scientific proof of its
effectiveness.

Instead, patients permitted by Health Canada to use marijuana must grow
their own or have someone else grow it for them.

If Health Canada agrees to abandon its high-potency strain, it would be
another setback in a problem-plagued project to grow standardized marijuana
in Canada for medical trials that would determine whether the drug offers
benefits -- such as pain relief -- to the chronically ill.

Other setbacks are outlined in documents obtained under the Access to
Information Act.

Prairie Plant Systems Inc. of Saskatoon, which in 2000 was awarded a
five-year, $5.75-million contract to grow a government crop, has failed to
deliver acceptable placebo marijuana.

The contract called for 50 kilograms of placebo product, containing less
than 0.1-per-cent THC, to be delivered last year. But the company could not
grow marijuana with so little THC. The company is considering whether to
use chemicals to remove the active ingredient in some of the crop.

Researchers need a placebo product for trials to demonstrate whether THC is
effective in alleviating some medical conditions.

The contract also required delivery last year of 370 kilograms of regular
product, but Prairie Plant Systems could produce only 244 kilograms.

The project had a rocky start when the company was unable to acquire
U.S.-government-approved seeds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse in
Bethesda, Md. Instead, it had to rely on 10,000 seeds seized by Canadian
police forces.

Only a third of the seeds sprouted, producing 185 varieties of wildly
varying THC content of little use to researchers, who require a
standardized product.