cannabisnews.com: Health Canada's Reefer Madness





Health Canada's Reefer Madness
Posted by CN Staff on September 22, 2003 at 08:12:45 PT
By Robert Remington
Source: Calgary Herald 
If you thought the gun registry was a mess, you should try buying pot from the federal government. Philippe Lucas, a 32-year-old hepatitis C sufferer from Victoria, is one of about 550 Canadians licensed to use medicinal marijuana. To be approved, he had to get two specialists to back the recommendation of his family doctor. It took him eight months to get an appointment with just one specialist, and that's in Victoria. If you live in Milk River, good luck. 
Then, to acquire his government-approved pot, he had to swear an oath before a lawyer that he would only buy from Health Canada, making the government his monopoly supplier. It took up to three weeks for the pot to arrive, which was sent to his family doctor, from whom he picked it up. His family doctor doesn't like receiving pot, for reasons of office security and because the doctor doesn't like being a marijuana middleman. When Lucas finally got his first batch of approved government grass several weeks ago, it was of such poor quality he sent it back. At a cost of $190 an ounce, it was full of stems and twigs and had a next-to-nothing buzz factor due to the low THC level mandated by the feds. "It reminded me of shwaggy Mexican brick weed," he said. Lucas, director of Canadians for Safe Access, a patient's right advocacy group for legal pot users, had the stuff tested against pot supplied by the Vancouver Island Compassion Society. In addition to looking and smelling bad, the government pot was found to be of inferior quality and, he says, potentially unsafe, with high levels of lead and arsenic. The government-approved pot is grown in an abandoned mine in Flin Flon by Prairie Plant Systems under a $5.5-million contract. Prairie Plant Systems is a private company founded in 1988 to develop improved strains of saskatoon berries, which, as everyone knows, make for great pies and jams.Prairie Plant Systems expanded its research to other fruit-bearing plants and to developing plant-based pharmaceuticals at its biosecure underground facility in Flin Flon. Brent Zettl, the company's president, refutes Lucas's findings and said he could grow better pot if the government let him. "We can make a product here as good as, or better than, anything grown anywhere in the country. If Health Canada wants a more potent strain, all they have to do is ask," he said last week. Zettl is probably very good at what he does, and therein lies the problem of the federal government being in the business of growing pot. There are plenty of old hippies out there who know more about growing marijuana than bureaucrats in Ottawa, and they're doing it at no cost to the taxpayer. As with any product, the consumer knows best, and legal consumers of medicinal pot are rejecting the government weed. "With this stuff, I have to smoke half a joint to get the same result. And you can tell they've ground up a lot of stem and leaf in with the buds. But what can I do? I don't want to buy from criminals," said Jari Dvorak, an HIV patient from Toronto, one of several approved pot users who have panned the Health Canada pot. Does it not make more sense to turn medicinal cannabis cultivation over to the real pot-growing experts, test it independently for safety, and get the government out of the pot business?Anne McLellan should either leave pot growing to Canada's non-profit compassion societies or let Prairie Plant Systems grow pot that users actually want. As a taxpayer, I'm angry that my tax dollars are going up in smoke, supplying overpriced skunkweed to patients who have a right to a product that is both beneficial and esthetically pleasing. Sick and dying people deserve no less. Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)Author: Robert Remington Published: Monday, September 22, 2003Copyright: 2003 Calgary HeraldContact: letters theherald.southam.caWebsite: http://www.calgaryherald.com/ Related Articles & Web Sites:Canadians for Safe Accesshttp://www.safeaccess.ca/Cannabis News Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmHealth Canada Medical Marijuana Could Be Betterhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17348.shtmlGovernment Cannabis Unfit for Humanshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17321.shtmlGovernment Pot's The Pits: Patients http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17316.shtml 
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