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.
Some patients who smoke medical marijuana are angry they'll have to continue to rely on pot grown in an abandoned mine shaft in Flin Flon. The federal government recently announced it will provide medical pot on a long-term basis to authorized patients while strict limits on grow operations remain in place. That means the Flin Flon marijuana, considered impotent by a number of users, will continue to be the only legal option for many patients. Marco Renda, a medical marijuana user, told The Canadian Press that the situation will only hurt sick people by sending them to the black market. This past summer, Health Canada adopted an interim policy mandating the government to sell marijuana and marijuana seeds to authorized patients. Clinical trials of the Flin Flon pot are reportedly underway. In September, three patients who had smoked the medical marijuana told The Canadian Press that it was weak and nauseating. "It made me nauseous because I had to use so much of it. It was so weak in potency that I really threw up," said Barrie Dalley, an AIDS patient in Toronto. Meanwhile, AIDS patient Jim Wakeford of Gibsons, B.C. called the weed "totally unsuitable for human consumption." The marijuana grow operation, located in a Trout Lake Mine shaft, was officially launched in August of 2001, putting Flin Flon in the international media spotlight.
