Pubdate: Mon, 21 Apr 2003
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2003 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Dean Beeby / Canadian Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

POTENT POT BEFUDDLES OTTAWA

Health Canada's Experimental Crop In Manitoba Is Proving Too Difficult To 
Grow And The Government Isn't Certain What To Do Next.

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.

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, 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 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.
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