|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
Canada: Potent Pot Befuddles Ottawa
ccguide Monday 21 Apr 2003 Pubdate: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: 2003 The Vancouver Sun Contact: Website: 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!