The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The medicinal marijuana that's made its way from a Flin Flon mine shaft to the hands of the sick was not yet perfected, the pot grower told The Canadian Press. "This is a very early-stage product," Brent Zettl of Saskatoon-based Prairie Plant Systems told CP last week. "We haven't hit the mark yet on this medicine." The comment came in response to a recent CP article in which three of the 10 patients who have smoked the pot so far said that the product was not up to snuff. One said the weed was too weak and made him nauseous while another called it "totally unsuitable for human consumption." Zettl, who has visited Flin Flon several times to promote the medicinal pot project, suggested that the product still required some refining, saying that the patients "are the first humans ever to use it." He also responded to the claim of a patients-rights group that the marijuana contained only three per cent THC, the active drug component in pot. Zettl said Prairie Plant Systems hired three labs that verified the weed contained the declared 10.2 per cent of THC. Prairie Plant Systems began supplying the medicinal marijuana to Health Canada-approved patients on August 13, according to CP. The pot was intended for clinical trials but went straight to patients after an Ontario court ordered Health Canada either to change its marijuana regulations or begin supplying the product directly to patients. "It would have been better to have had this go through the clinical trials first," Zettl told CP. The marijuana growth chamber is located in an abandoned shaft at Trout Lake Mine.
