If you walk the streets of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, the smell of cannabis burning isn’t something unusual. While countries like Canada have decided to fully legalize medical marijuana and recreational cannabis, Israelis may have felt that that was the path for the nation who was the first to study and classify the molecular compounds in cannabis and hashish. Professor Raphael Mechoulam, who I have interviewed and who died in 2023, was a chemist who was given a pile of hashish from the Israeli police and took it upon himself to study the medical applications of the illicit substance.
He had all sorts of fanciful nicknames for the plant, such as Ananda from Sanskrit which means “supreme joy” and he believed that there are more than 100 molecules in the cannabis plant that play a role in its medication. He told me that the human body has special receptors for accepting these molecules, making for an interesting match between plant and man.
So in 2015 when I founded the CannaTech conference and hundreds of people came out for the event on last minute’s notice (it featured Israeli-American physician Alan Shackelford) it felt that cannabis use as medicine, but also recreationally would be accepted on the streets of Tel Aviv. Until then police turned a blind eye to smoking on the street, but selling or growing it could get you in jail.
Still, there was always people who believed they were above the law and that full legalization was around the corner. One of those people was the founder of a Telegram group called Telegrass. Join, say you want and it would be delivered. Finding cannabis was never so easy. Who needed to bother going through the hassle of getting a medical permit?
According to Israeli media Telegrass founder Amos Dov Silver was sentenced to eight years of jail this week following a plea agreement. Telegrass connected an estimated 3,000 drug dealers to more than 200,000 clients.
Meanwhile cannabis companies from Israel expand to Greece to supply medical cannabis to Europe. And companies like Tipa make compostable packaging for edibles in America – see Wyld Edibles.
Silver was arrested in 2022 already. In the years before his arrest, Silver was an activist for cannabis legalization, including organizing The Big Bong Night in 2014. Israel has taken steps in recent years to make medical cannabis available and is poised to become a major exporter of the crop. Recreational use of the drug remains illegal, however. The Public Security Ministry partially decriminalized it in 2017, setting fines and treatment for initial offenders instead of criminal procedures.
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