Pubdate: Sat, 28 Jul 2001
Source: Wired Magazine (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Wired Digital Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wired.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/505
Author:  Charles Mandel
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

MINING THE DEPTHS FOR DOPE

In an abandoned Manitoba mine shaft 1,200 feet below the surface of a
lake near Flin Flon, Brent Zettl is growing 185 kilos of marijuana
this year.

Sounds risky, but Zettl's not worried about getting busted. His client
for the $5.8 million crop is the government of Canada.

Zettl runs Prairie Plant Systems, a biotech firm out of Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan. The pot he grows will go toward government-sponsored
clinical tests to see if the drug is medically effective and can help
alleviate the pain for people suffering from diseases such as AIDS and
cancer.

The company is cultivating the herb in the mineshaft under grow lights
in a 12,000 square-foot growth chamber. Zettl says the mine's
underground growth chambers offer control over the plant's growth
cycle as well as security.

"When you get 100 percent control over the environment, you take out
the peaks and valleys of temperature and humidity stress. We have no
bugs or disease underground, so the plants can now take all the energy
and shift it to growth," said Zettl, the president and CEO of Prairie
Plant Systems.

The plant's growth rate underground is accelerated as much as 400
percent, and Zettl says that one variety is growing as much as an
inch-and-a-half daily. Zettl, who is growing the plants from seeds
provided by Health Canada (who obtained them from drug arrests),
expects the first crop of medical marijuana to be ready in October.

Zettl's lucrative marijuana contract comes from a series of happy
coincidences. In 1991, after hard rock miners noticed orange and apple
seeds, which they'd spit out, growing as high as six inches in total
darkness before they died, the Hudson Bay Smelting and Mining Co. Ltd.
invited Zettl's company to try their hand at growing plants
underground.

The copper and zinc mine is still in use, with another 25 years of ore
reserves estimated, but Hudson Bay's extraction is now carried about
four miles away from Prairie Plant Systems' underground chamber.

When Prairie Plant Systems first went underground, the company was
still concentrating on cloning and creating hardy, disease-free
Saskatoon berry trees. In late 2000, the company received the
five-year contract from Health Canada to become its pot supplier.

"Canada is acting compassionately by allowing the use of marijuana by
people who are suffering from grave and debilitating illness," said
Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock when he awarded the contract.

Health Canada tendered a contract for medical marijuana because it
wanted a Canadian source of research-grade weed available to people
participating in medical research programs, as well as for people
authorized to use it for medical purposes.

The use of medical marijuana in Canada stems partly from a July 2000
Ontario Court of Appeals decision that ruled in the case of Terrance
Parker, who used pot to help control his epilepsy.

The court stayed a 1997 lower court decision to uphold the charges
against Parker on constitutional grounds, citing issues related to
Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That act gives
the Health Minister discretion to decide who has access to marijuana
for medical purposes.

In a companion case, the same court concluded that the Canadian
Parliament could validly prohibit the use of pot for recreational purposes.

In late July 2000, the Canadian government announced regulations
governing the possession and production of marijuana for medical
purposes. To apply for and possess medical marijuana, a person must
have symptoms associated with a terminal illness with a prognosis of
death within 12 months, or symptoms associated with medical conditions
listed in a schedule to the regulations, among other
qualifications.

Prairie Plants Systems is also operating a pilot project at the White
Pine Mine in Michigan. The crop growing in the 30,000 square-foot
chamber is another Health Canada contract for a glycol-protein-engineered
tobacco plant that promises to help in the treatment of bone marrow
cancer.

Zettl says one of the reasons why Prairie Plant Systems went after the
marijuana contract is to prove that the concept of growing
bio-pharmaceutical plants underground works. "We have to repeat this
at the White Pine Mine, not with marijuana, but with other crops."

Zettl says that if they can prove that the process is viably
commercial, "it will pave the way for a lot of new drugs being
developed and provided in a cost-effective and environmentally
responsible manner." 
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager