THIS BUD'S NOT FOR YOU

Feds Mull Axing Potent Pot

A strain of government-certified marijuana is extremely potent but
difficult to grow, and may be abandoned because it's too much trouble,
officials say.

The flowering tops or buds of the strain, grown for Health Canada in a
vacant mine section in Flin Flon, Man., contain 20-25% THC, the most active
ingredient of marijuana, laboratory results show.

Tests on marijuana seized by U.S. police forces suggest ordinary street
dope averages about 5% THC, with sinsemilla -- considered the champagne of
weed -- averaging about 10%.

The potent Flin Flon strain -- one of two official strains that produced a
crop of 244 kg last fall -- is anemic and tough to grow.

"We don't want high-maintenance plants," said Cindy Cripps-Prawak, chief of
the federal government'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, between
13 and 18%. Those levels are more in line with the needs of clinical
trials, said Cripps-Prawak.

"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%.

Health Canada has said it will not make any of its marijuana available to
needy patients because it first wants to see scientific proof about whether
the drug is effective.

Project Woes

Instead, patients approved by Health Canada must either grow their own
marijuana or have someone else grow it for them.

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

Some of the other setbacks, as outlined in documents obtained under Access
to Information, include a $5.75-million contract awarded to Prairie Plant
Systems of Saskatoon, Sask., which was to grow government dope, but has
failed to deliver any acceptable placebo marijuana.

Health Canada has withheld payments to Prairie Plant Systems, said
Cripps-Prawak.

The contract called for 50 kg of placebo product, containing less than 0.1%
THC, to be delivered last year. But the firm has been unable to grow
anything with so little THC.

Researchers need a placebo product for blind trials.

The marijuana project got off to a rocky start when Prairie Plant Systems
was unable to acquire U.S.-government-approved seeds. 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 varying THC
content and of little use to researchers, who require a standardized product.