OTTAWA MAY ABANDON HIGHLY POTENT POT STRAIN

A strain of government-certified marijuana is extremely potent but
difficult to grow, and may eventually be abandoned as 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 between 20 and 25 per cent
THC, the most active ingredient of marijuana, laboratory results show.

American tests on marijuana seized by U.S. police forces suggest ordinary
street dope averages about five 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 anemic and tough
to grow successfully.

"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, between
13 and 18 per cent in its buds. 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 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 first wants to see scientific proof
about whether the drug is effective.

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 Canadian
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 the
Access to Information Act:

- - Prairie Plant Systems Inc. of Saskatoon, Sask., which in 2000 was awarded
a five-year, $5.75-million contract to grow government dope, has so far
failed to deliver any 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 has been
unable to grow anything with so little THC, and is considering using
chemical means to remove the active ingredient in some of the existing crop.

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

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

- - The project got off to 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 and of little use to researchers, who require a
standardized product.

That first crop of 74 kilograms, delivered in 2001, remains in storage but
may be used to extract pure THC later.

Prairie Plant Systems, meanwhile, picked two strains from those 185
varieties to cultivate for the second crop. A third strain was held in reserve.

It wasn't clear how the company managed to select such high-potency pot
from those varieties.

Cripps-Prawak said the company will use the third reserve strain if a
decision is made to abandon the high-potency strain.

The department has withheld payments from Prairie Plant Systems for not
providing a placebo product and for failing to deliver the contracted 370
kilograms last year, she added.

The company is currently testing blending procedures - mixing buds, leaves
and small twigs - to produce five different grades of marijuana with
differing potencies. The final product will eventually be sealed in 30-gram
foil envelopes with labels.

None of the government-approved marijuana has been sent to researchers yet
pending approval of their proposals by the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research.