December 22, 2001

By Carolyn Abraham, Medical Reporte

Globe and Mail 

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.

With a report by Brian Laghi in Ottawa.