MEDICINAL-POT USERS FUMING OVER DELAYS

While 250 kilograms of marijuana sits in cold storage in a Manitoba
mineshaft, Health Canada is learning it is not easy to be a drug
dealer.

The government announced last December that it would take the
unprecedented step of growing the otherwise illegal weed for
medicinal purposes. A year later, federal bureaucrats are still
trying to figure out how to package, label and distribute their first
dope harvest.

Officials have not decided whether to roll it into joints, send it
out in Ziploc bags, grind it or deliver it in bulk. They are
investigating whether to make it available from drugstore pharmacists
or by personal courier. Neither has the department pinned down the
labelling details of the drug's active ingredients or its shelf life.

Sick people who have received special exemptions to possess pot as a
medical treatment are anxiously awaiting the shipments. But with many
issues unresolved, the company hired to grow the pot in an abandoned
Flin Flon mine estimates that delivery could still be three to four
months away.

"Unless by some stroke of ingenuity they can expedite the process, my
expectation is that it could be that long before we have it in the
hands of exemptees," said Brent Zettl, president of Prairie Plant
Systems Inc., which won the $5.7-million cannabis contract. "But this
is the first time anyone in the world is doing this, and there has to
be due process."

Cindy Cripps-Prawak, director of the government's Office of Cannabis
Medical Access, acknowledged that she has received angry phone calls
from impatient exemptees. But since the government is breaking new
ground dealing in a product more commonly known as an illicit street
drug, she said: "I think we're moving as quickly as is safe. We want
to make a pharmaceutical-grade product available."

Health sources said yesterday they plan to get in touch with the 680
people who have been approved to possess marijuana to see how they
would like to have it delivered. There are only three ways they can
legally obtain the drug: they must grow it themselves, have someone
else grow it for them or obtain it from Health Canada.

The government hopes those who use its drug supply will also
participate in research on the medicinal benefits of cannabis. But it
is not yet clear how much exemptees will have to pay for the drug or
whether those who take part in a clinical trial will be charged.

Over the past year, Ms. Cripps-Prawak said, the department's thinking
on the matter has evolved. While the original contract with Prairie
Plant Systems called for the production of marijuana cigarettes, for
example, the department has since heard that exemptees prefer to roll
their own.

Many who rely on marijuana to relieve chronic pain or build appetite
have accused the government of growing weak weed, since the federal
contract called for levels of THC, marijuana's main active
ingredient, of between 5 per cent and 7 per cent. But preliminary
tests on the first harvest, which was grown from pot confiscated by
police across Canada, appears to be a bumper crop with THC levels at
least as high as 12 per cent.

Ms. Cripps-Prawak said her office is considering formulating
different blends of marijuana to make it available at different
strengths.