The federal government, which requires the drug for clinical research, awarded a contract worth $3.8 million ($5.75 million Canadian), to Prairie Plant Systems Inc., of Saskatoon after coming under criticism in Canadian courts for its controled substances policies.
Ottawa has also been under pressure from pro-marijuana groups to legalize the drug for general use, but none of the 926 pounds of marijuana to be produced annually at the company's farming facility will be released for general use.
Prairie Plant Systems says it will use an abandoned mine to produce the marijuana crop under the strictist security precautions deep underground.
The mine, in the wind-blown Prairie town of Flin Flon, Manitoba, has been used previously to produce genetically-altered crops under strict conditions so that none of the seeds or pollen could accidentally be blown about by the wind.
Brent Zettl, the chief executive officer of Prairie Plant Systems, said the same precautions that prevented the seeds of gene-altered plants from getting out will now be used to prevent two-legged intruders from getting in.
The marijuana is to be grown by the hydroponic method, which allows plants to be grown indoors in solutions containing the necessary nutrients. The hydroponic method has been used before on a small scale in Canada, but those using it have run the risk of being arrested and charged under Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act even when they claimed to be growing it for medicinal purposes.
However, government prosecutors have lost a series of court battles over the past three years, where some marijuana users have successfully argued that they needed the drug for relief from such diseases as multiple sclerosis.
The evidence provided in the courts so far has been anecdotal, and the federal health department now wants to carry out a series of experiments over a five-year period to try out the drug for clinical use. For this, officials said, Health Canada needed pure marijuana produced under controlled conditions.
Though law enforcement officers have literally seized thousands of pounds of marijuana from illicit dealers and users, none of the drugs seized was pure. All of the samples contained impurities such as fungii.
The marijuana to be produced by Prairie Plant Systems will be pure, but some of the cigarettes to be produced by the company will be placebos, and those undergoing the tests will not know in advance what they will get to smoke.
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