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ALLAN ROCK'S MARIJUANA GARDEN

It is amazing. With every Cabinet post, Allan Rock brings down a new series of disasters. He is, in fact, disaster personified.

It is difficult to understand why this is happening, since he seems to be a perfectly intelligent person. He left behind a successful legal career when he first ran for Parliament in 1993. On his election, he was immediately appointed Minister of Justice until 1997 when he was shuffled over to Health, and now he is busy causing more disaster as the Minister of Industry.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that Mr. Rock had no political experience prior to his appointments to the Cabinet, and he is unable to grasp what he can and cannot do as a minister. That is, he does not understand that his power is not absolute, and there are curbs on him. Perhaps too, Mr. Rock just has poor judgement.

Pot Growing Flops

One of Mr. Rock's most recent flops was his enthusiastic undertaking to grow pot on behalf of the government. The plan was to make marijuana available to medical researchers to obtain scientific proof as to whether marijuana actually has any medical benefits.

In 1999, the Ontario Court of Appeal, which has a well-deserved reputation for legally unsubstantiated incoherent decisions, decided in Regina v. Parker that marijuana should be freely available for medical purposes. A more sound minister would have appealed the controversial decision to the Supreme Court of Canada for final resolution, but not Mr. Rock. Even though he was not required to apply the decision of the provincial Ontario Court of Appeal throughout Canada, Mr. Rock jumped on the Ontario decision, amending the regulations under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to allow marijuana use for medical purposes, even though there was no proof it had medical benefits. Patients were free to grow their own, or have someone else grow it for them. In 2000, Mr. Rock enthusiastically opened a pot growing establishment for medical research purposes in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba, at a cost to the taxpayer of $5.75 million. Unfortunately, Mr. Rock's pot garden has been less than successful.

The project supervisors were unable to acquire US government-approved seeds from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland. Instead, they were obliged to rely on 10,000 seeds seized by the Canadian police forces.

And what a crop it has turned out to be! Most of the crop contains 20% - 25% THC, the most active ingredient in marijuana. Usually, street marijuana has a 5% THC content. Also, this Flin Flon strain of marijuana is tough to grow. Further, the crop failed to include acceptable "placebo" (0.1% THC) marijuana necessary for researchers for control purposes to demonstrate whether THC is effective in alleviating some medical conditions. All together, only a third of the seeds sprouted, producing 185 varieties of widely varying THC content can be used by researchers, who require a standardized product. Only this part of the crop, which contained THC in the 10 - 15% range, has been retrieved for trial purposes

Medical Trials

Currently, there are a few marijuana trials being carried out in Canada. Health Canada provided the funding for those latter trials but not the seeds, which latter were obtained from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. Why then did Mr. Rock decide that Canada should grow its own crop of marijuana for medical trials, when the standardized product could be obtained for this purpose from the US? It could just be poor judgement on the part of Mr. Rock, or, perhaps he saw himself as the "Czar of Pot," as the first step to liberating Canadians to the "joys" of pot, while, oddly, as Minister of Health, ignoring its grave medical complications caused by its use. That is, a combination of poor judgement and ego may have led to Mr. Rock's extraordinary decision to grow pot. A poor combination of reasons on which a Minister of the Crown to act.

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