cannabisnews.com: Medical Pot Not Up To Snuff





Medical Pot Not Up To Snuff
Posted by CN Staff on April 05, 2004 at 07:31:12 PT
By Donald McArthur, Star Staff Reporter 
Source: Windsor Star 
Unless the government learns to grow better dope, a proposal to distribute Health Canada marijuana in pharmacies will go up in smoke, say local medical marijuana advocates."They have to improve their product or this project isn't going to go anywhere at all," said Fred Pritchard of Windsor's marijuana compassion club. "I can't believe the government pushes this garbage on sick people. We're going to make them sicker."
A 43-year-old Windsor woman authorized to smoke pot for medical reasons said she became sick after trying the Health Canada weed last fall and sent it back to the government in disgust."I had anxiety so bad and I had nausea so bad and I was crying," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "I'd been waiting so long and it was just such a big letdown. It's not fit for human consumption."The federal government gave Prairie Plant Systems Inc. a five-year $5.7 million contract in December 2000 to grow marijuana in a former copper mine in Flin Flon, Man. The product has been blasted as inferior "schwag" and vilified for giving users nausea and headaches.The physical difference between the government grass and marijuana Pritchard supplies to patients permitted to indulge for medical reasons couldn't be more marked. Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/product.htmSource: Windsor Star (CN ON)Author: Donald McArthur, Star Staff Reporter Published: Monday, April 05, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Windsor Star Contact: letters thestar.canwest.comWebsite: http://www.windsorstar.com/ Related Articles & Web Site:Cannabis News Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmGov't Wrong To Push Medical Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18569.shtmlHealth Canada's Reefer Madnesshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17376.shtmlHealth Canada Medical Marijuana Could Be Betterhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17348.shtml 
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Comment #11 posted by jose melendez on April 06, 2004 at 12:11:45 PT
hear, HEAR!
"How hard would it be for us to convince the public on our own that higher potency bud is better for people than low potency schwag? Health Canada is doing it for us using their own enormous budget. It's even gotten the idea into the American mainstream press."Right on target, E_J. Answering the objection is the key to the sale. 
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Comment #10 posted by E_Johnson on April 05, 2004 at 13:25:58 PT
But they've done a great favor for the movement
How hard would it be for us to convince the public on our own that higher potency bud is better for people than low potency schwag? Health Canada is doing it for us using their own enormous budget. It's even gotten the idea into the American mainstream press.It's really hard to get the news media to print facts about marijuana. Facts about marijuana are not news. they are "glamorizing drugs".Health Canada has screwed up in a way that makes facts about marijuana into a legitimate news story where medical patients and growers are credible sources of information.
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Comment #9 posted by kaptinemo on April 05, 2004 at 12:02:26 PT:
Those patients might need chelation therapy
after having that heavy-metal suffused crappabis. No wonder they get so sick. Bad enough they're ill to begin with; worse that the stuff meant to be medicine contains heavy metals at levels far above that proven to be deleterious to *healthy* people. You might as well chew the ore rocks to get the same levels. Ack! Ugh!And NOBODY needs *lead*, at all. The Romans lined their aqueducts with it, and put it in their wine to sweeten it; there's some theories that they were such a violent, often irrational people due to lead poisoning. Once again, PPS and Health Canada prove John Lennon's dictum that 90% of anything government touches turns to s**t.(*Pure* Prairie Systems? *PURE*? Does Canada have 'truth-in-advertising' laws? What came out of that mine, from all reports, was anything but 'pure'.)
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Comment #8 posted by Virgil on April 05, 2004 at 10:49:27 PT
PPS pot was bad by design
PPS could grow decent Miracleplant but Health Canada sabotaged everything. The Hitzig decision is being appealed to the Canadian Supreme Court or maybe this filing at Medpot at Yahoo Groups is the historic filing leading to December 23, 2003. Paul Burnstein is the lawyer presenting the facts in this filing and is associated with Allan Young. Medpot 1118 is presenting the filing with commentary and this is what appears as fact in #25 at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/MedPot/message/111825. Almost immediately following Health Canada's
announcement of its new interim policy and regulatory
amendments," several medical marijuana users, including a
number of the Applicants in this case, commenced the
application process required to gain access to the
Government's supply of dried marijuana. Many of those who
have obtained the Government-supply of marijuana have
complained about the poor quality of the marijuana that has
been provided to them. Most have found that the marijuana
provided by the Government has little or no beneficial
effect. Brent Zettl, the President of PPS, has indicated
that Health Canada has required PPS to blend lower-THC
strains with the higher-THC strains of marijuana which PPS
had previously produced.JCT: Which must have been too strong???PB: According to Mr. Zettl, Health Canada has also insisted
that PPS grind the entire dried plant - i.e., stalk, leaf
and "bud"*1 - into a single mixture which is then shipped to
the medical marijuana users.
*1 Marijuana smokers would not normally consume the stalk
and the leaf. It is the dried flower tops, commonly referred
to as "buds", which contain the active ingredients.JCT: Considering these are the guys who ban removing the
useless non-bud plant parts to make hash, it makes sense
that they'd also want to increase the danger of smoke by
adding the useless non-bud plant parts to the blend. They
sound crazy. I call it homicidal, even genocidal. Someone
should be in front of a judge to answer for this.And actually, there is some THC on the leaf, enough for
people to shake it off the leaves to make hash. You can see
the glassy crystals all over the plant, just that the buds
have much larger ones and moreso. And yet, it's the even
more-weakened shake with mainly the leafy cannabinoids that
oldsters want for marijuana muffins to put them to sleep at
night. The younger people may want the bud for the buzz
while the oldsters want the leaf for the sleepy relief. So
the statement that the leaf doesn't contain an objectionable
amount of THC is misleading, I'm sure they'd object.PB: As a result of the poor production qualify of the PPS-
marijuana, many authorized medical marijuana users have
chosen to cancel their subscription for the Government
supply and have returned to the vagaries of the black
market.JCT: You can trust bikers not to add junk to the herb like
our Government does.
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Comment #7 posted by observer on April 05, 2004 at 10:18:49 PT
save me from bureaucratic imaginations
the limitations of the bureaucratic imagination.I don't know. In the states we had a joke. It went like this, "Hi. I'm from the government and I'm here to help." This got a sardonic laugh from those "helped" by government. When I hear about imaginative government bureaucrats, I'd grab my wallet.Innovation Is Dangerous
When the government stimulates it. Article by Jorn K. Baltzersen. Apr 5. 2004 http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/baltzersen4.htm "A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?" 
-- Cicero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CiceroThe only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights. 
- H.L. Mencken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencken"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." 
- Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman 
http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot
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Comment #6 posted by E_Johnson on April 05, 2004 at 09:50:25 PT
I have a different interpretation
I don't believe there is any conscious conspiracy to make bad marijuana so that marijuana looks bad.What I believe is that they have the usual problem in government -- the limitations of the bureaucratic imagination.They can't imagine that their own propganda about marijuana could be wrong, because they believe in themselves so earnestly.So they tried to avoid maximizing the potency, when maximizing the potency is exactly what medical users need.They can't think outide the modern box of sterile pharmaceutical uniformity and the pill paradigm.Their imaginations can't handle the idea of a living medicine, a medicine that was once alive, that people want to see appear in all of its natural glory, as God made it, not as it came out of their grinder.It's just not one of the ideas that came in the thinking box they were given when they stopped being fully human and joined the government and become part machine.
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Comment #5 posted by E_Johnson on April 05, 2004 at 09:34:06 PT
They're playing out a bad hand then
"That is the government game. If forced, grudgingly, to distribute cannabis, then distribute the crappiest cannabis possible, in hopes that people will "realize" that cannabis is no good."But what they will accomplish is to enrage the doctors. Each of these recipients has a doctor who signed the papers. Eventually the good doctors will overrrule the indifferent ones with their anger.This is like the Bushadmin thinking they could intimidate California doctors by their attacks.All they did in the end was get them riled and increase their support for us.Things like this force the people around us to choose beteween indifference and action. If even 10% choose action, we win.About calling people sheep:These are the sheep that you want in your own herd, aren't they?I mean, you WOULD like these people to vote in your favor, would you not?
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Comment #4 posted by E_Johnson on April 05, 2004 at 09:20:57 PT
The government can't grow decent pot
As a lifelong liberal Democrat, this is an eye opening experience for me.A bunch of scared powerless people using their own resources in hiding can grow the best pot in the world.Give a government agency all the money and power they want and the only thing they can come up with is brown schwag.Gosh golly.
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Comment #3 posted by observer on April 05, 2004 at 08:55:38 PT
Get government OUT of it
A 43-year-old Windsor woman authorized to smoke pot for medical reasons said she became sick after trying the Health Canada weed last fall and sent it back to the government in disgust.Wasn't that the whole point of government "cannabis"? Where did we see this trick before? A government, deeply concerned (over appearances), decides to be "compassionate" and distribute "medical" cannabis. Only the "medical" cannabis which is distributed (to some token number of hurting people -- all others be damned), is not "medical" at all. It is crap. That is the government game. If forced, grudgingly, to distribute cannabis, then distribute the crappiest cannabis possible, in hopes that people will "realize" that cannabis is no good.http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/pg/nida_stems_n_seeds.htmFolks, this is what happens when government "helps." We need to get the government back OUT of the pot biz. NO arrests for using. NO arrests for selling. NO arrests for growing. Back like it was, before the 1930s (in the US, federally). Just give us our freedom back. Get the government out of it.Crappy pot and arrests are the best one can expect from government. Power, especially government (police and prosecutorial) power corrupts people. The answer is not to tinker with the controls a little bit. (E.g. "They government should just sell better pot.") The answer is for government to get the heck out of it. Fans of government will recoil in horror. To governmental fanatics, true believers of government, and those sucking on the teats of government generosity, such is insane. (After all, does not government sign their paychecks?)''Now, obviously, there is no point in passing a law which requires people to do something they would do anyhow; or which prevents them from doing what they are not going to do anyhow. Therefore, the possessor of the political power could very well decide to leave every person free to do as he pleases so long as he does not infringe upon the same right of every other person to do as he pleases. However, that concept appears to be utterly without reason to a person who wants to exercise political power over his fellow man, for he asks himself: "How can I ‘do good’ for the people if I just leave them alone?" Besides, he does not want to pass into history as a "do nothing" leader who ends up as a footnote somewhere. So he begins to pass laws that will force all other persons to conform to his ideas of what is good for them.'' ["Power Corrupts," Ben Moreell, 1992
 http://www.acton.org/publicat/randl/article.php?id=65 ] And so we have it. The sheep bleat for government to do something. Those in government are only too happy to "help." From this springs prohibition and the incessant meddling of your beloved nanny state, where adults are all treated as children. Yeah, tinker with the system a little. Make those bureaucrats force people to do what you want. That will fix everything.
http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/canada breaking Canadian pot news
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on April 05, 2004 at 08:38:46 PT
Marc
I do know about phasing out the right for you all to grow. That is terrible. It is wrong to even consider denying patients the right to have a small medical garden.
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Comment #1 posted by Marc Paquette on April 05, 2004 at 08:29:41 PT:
And they also plan to phase out our right to grow!
Hi my Friends Don't forget that within our exemption, HC does not guarantee the quality or efficacy of the product, and we have to sign on this or there's no exemption. Our health authorities that cannot get a guarantee of quality on a medical product? What is this? What other "medical products" that HC doesn't put it's guarantee of
sucurity or efficacy?This is pure negligence due to the MMAR's overpowerment by
prohibitionist authorities. They have to go, or it will not work.Peace,Marc
http://www.medpot.net
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