The king of Morocco has decided to pardon 5,000 farmers convicted of illegal cannabis cultivation, the justice ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Morocco is now a major cannabis producer and has legislated the cultivation, export and use of the drug for medicine or in industry since 2021, but it does not allow it to be used for recreational purposes. Cannabis extracts such as CBD has been found to be helpful to treat autism and epilepsy.

The latest pardon by King Mohammed VI would encourage farmers “to engage in the legal process of cannabis cultivation to improve their revenue and living conditions,” Mohammed El Guerrouj, the head of Moroccan cannabis regulator ANRAC, told Reuters.

Morocco’s first legal cannabis harvest weighed 294 metric tons back in 2023, according to officials.

This year it is expected to be higher as the number of farming permits increases officials allow farmers to cultivate a local strain called Beldia.

About a million people live in northern Morocco where cannabis is now the main economic activity. People have been growing and smoking it for generations, along with tobacco in long-stemmed pipes.

Legalization was meant to stop trafficking and improve the farmers’ income. It has awarded 54 export permits last year. Here is a great research article on the history and challenges of cannabis and medical marijuana in Morocco from 2017.

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Tobacco sales are down in the United States and Canada but cannabis use, following full legalization of marijuana in countries like Canada is on the rise. Hoping to get into the business one of the world’s largest cigarette companies Phillip Morris has taking a sharp turn toward cannabis by buying the Israeli medical cannabis inhaler and dosage device Syqe. The deal is worth $650 million.

It was no surprise that this would happen as the company invested $20 million into the medical device company in 2016. Syqe was built to dose a more accurate amount of medicine than current inhalers and dispensers in the market.

Israel’s National Insurance Institute (NII) partnered with Syqe recently to fully cover medical marijuana treatments with a metered inhaler for victims of terrorism or criminal violence. Studies suggest that medical cannabis can be effective in certain people for treating anxiety and PTSD.

The US Federal Trade Commission’s latest report on cigarette sales and marketing shows that cigarette sales by the largest US cigarette companies fell to 190.2 billion in 2021, the first time cigarette sales have fallen below 200 billion and a drop of 70% from a high of 636.5 billion in 1981. The 6.7% drop from 2020 to 2021 shows that the long decline in cigarettes sales has resumed after a small upward blip in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The huge, continuing drop in cigarette sales reflects the enormous declines in smoking rates among both youth and adults in recent decades. It will pay off in improved health and countless lives saved for generations to come. So what’s a tobacco company to do? Cannabis of course.

According to the deal, Phillip Morris will invest $130 million to finance the process of obtaining the FDA approval for Syqe’s inhaler. The FDA is the American health authority, The Federal Drug Administration, which gives the seal of approval for medical devices and pharmaceuticals in the United States. If the process goes through Phillip Morris will acquire Syqe’s shares for $650 million.

This transaction would be run via Phillip Morris’ subsidiary Vectura, a UK company specializing in inhaler products to deliver medicines. If this deal works, it would be a first for the FDA agreeing to use raw cannabis as medicine.

Israel is the world’s first country to investigate the medicinal properties and chemistry of cannabis. Legendary cannabis research Prof. Raphael Mechoulam, while at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, was the first to isolate and name THC and CBD from a sample of hashish. He died this year at 92. I have personally interviewed him over the years.

Israeli-American physician Alan Shackelford, also pioneered cannabis as medicine in the United States. He consulted Mechoulam’s research on epilepsy and cannabis before dosing a child Charlotte Figi with THC and CBD in the US.

Israel has legalised cannabis for medical use but unlike Canada which has fully legalized cannabis for recreation and medicine, Israel has been slow to overcome that stage and has put a brake on what could have given Israel an edge in the market. Pioneering companies like Tikkun Olam (read our interview with them), original growers in Israel, have lost their market value from an overwhelming number of growers in the country. Its assets were up for auction recently and it merged with a Canadian real estate company. It is cheaper to grow cannabis elsewhere where there are fewer regulations and government hurdles.

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The pandemic has changed the lives of many – some lost their job, while some are on the brink of losing their minds. This is natural given the fact that, in some countries, people were under strict lockdown rules that prevented them from leaving the house.

Naturally, if you’re not cut for a solitary or indoor lifestyle, you’ll soon see the effects of a lockdown on your mental health. Obviously, mental health is not something to toy with.

As such, in the following lines, we’ll tell you some of the things you can do to take care of your mental health during the pandemic!

Watch Less News

Lockdown and quarantine come with one main thing – namely, increased anxiety, especially when related to pandemic-related news. This is why most specialists recommend taking a break from the news and/or watch channels that actually tell the news and not fake news.

Overall, limit the amount of stressful information you receive – the 5 am news should be just enough for a daily update.

Take Care of Your Body

Instead of falling into a slumber, it’s essential to take care of your physical health – because the mental one can’t operate properly without being guided by a healthy body.

As such, do your best to avoid junk and fast-food, keep your meals regular and healthy, sleep for at least 8 hours a night (looking for a new bed – try Avocado organic mattresses), engage in exercise, and, most importantly, don’t give in to alcohol or medication (antidepressants and so on). Look for some of the best nootropic choline supplements to regulate your internal balance. You can also monitor how well you are getting on in the night with a sleep calculator.  Though getting into nature and just digging into the soil might be the best natural medicine in the world.

Take Care of Your Mind

As mentioned above, stress and anxiety are two by-products of the pandemic and its restrictions. Luckily, thanks to this pandemic, a lot of companies/services with recreational purposes have significantly developed.

If you visit a CBD clinic, you’ll see that now you can freely enjoy CBD products (depending on where you live) and let them help you have a clearer mind that is free of stress, potential depression, and anxiety.

Talk to Other People

If you live alone, you must talk regularly to other people. Believe it or not, even small chitchat with a person you may not be that fond of can really help you eliminate bad thoughts and anxiety.

When you spend two, three, or more weeks locked up in your home without any sort of contact with another person, you slowly start to lose your mind. As such, go online, find a chat platform or forums, and engage in some healthy human-to-human conversations!

The Bottom Line

Mental health is basically what gets us going every single day. If we do not take care of it, we’ll soon experience behavioral changes and, before you know it, you’ll change your entire lifestyle.

All because you let the pandemic and its restrictions change your usual schedule too much. Keep in mind that, despite all the restrictions, there are still plenty of alternatives through which you can continue to have a close-to-normal lifestyle and a healthy body/mind!

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They crush local black ants (Pachycondyla sennaarensis) and blend the crumbs in tobacco, drop them into a medhwak (smoking pipe) or sprinkle them on regular smokes before lighting up, according to Gulf News. Health officials say the consequences could be far more harmful than smoking marijuana or hashish.

In certain neighborhoods of Sharjah and Dubai, teens can be found searching alleys and parking lots for the native red ants, called samsun. The fumes from the burnt insect produce visual and auditory hallucinations like those induced by marijuana.

“Samsun ants contain highly concentrated formic acid which is used by the insect to ward off predators and kill prey. When heated the formic acid produces toxic gases. They are not addictive but inhaling them can cause pulmonary fibrosis and renal failure besides other conditions including irreversible nervous system damage,” a Dubai-based pulmonologist told Gulf News.

When they bite, formic acid causes necrosis or deadening of the tissues. Mohammed al Ali, 27, believes the trend started with labourers from the subcontinent who roll the ants into their bhindis – pure tobacco cigarettes rolled up using a tobacco leaf. “It’s a social thing for Indian workers,” the Emirati told The National News. “Go to Satwa Square and they are sitting there smoking the ants they rolled up into their bhindis.

Dubai’s Tobacco Control committee said it was aware of the ant smoking fad, although they have yet to gauge how widespread the habit is among Arab teens. “Until last year there would be just two of three boys, but now there are several groups,” a local Sharjah resident told the website.

“For some teens, the acid in the poison glands of ants smells like vinegar and they inhale its pungent fumes to get a kick. It’s very dangerous as it can cause lung and other diseases,” Dr. Wedad Al Maidoor, Head of the National Tobacco Control Committee, Ministry of Health, told Gulf News. Dr. Reza Khan, wildlife specialist at Dubai Municipality, said a bite by the ant can be fatal for people with allergies if they are not immediately treated in a hospital.

The fad may have started in labor camps where impoverished guest workers smoke ant-filled beedis (hand-rolled cigarettes made of tendu leaves) as a cheap alternative to illegal drugs.

Smoking ants can cause lung diseases and kidney failure, and in some cases, it can also cause sudden death.

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Newspapers like Bloomberg are calling the newly “legalized” cannabis business in the United States the next gold rush. If legalized throughout the US, the cannabis business will eclipse wine. That’s something worth about $40 billion a year. So “prospectors”, inventors and investors there are laying down their stakes and claiming access to new territory.

But in Israel where cannabis has been researched freely since the 60s (I have had the pleasure of interviewing THC discoverer Raphael Mechoulam); and consumed legally with a license, there has been plenty of wiggle time and room for innovation. Syqe, a new medical inhaler printed with 3D technology is one of the latest companies to innovate specifically for the medical cannabis market.

One of the problems I’ve learned researching the efficacy of cannabis as a therapeutic agent is dosing. It’s very hard for patients who are not regular smokers to know how to dose and therefor right therapy.

Syqe Medical, a new medical cannabis company from Israel, has developed an inhaler that lets people, we’ll call them “patients” but anyone can use the device, to supply metered doses of vapor made from cannabis granules.

The dosage can be programmed via your iPhone. See an image below of how the cartridges should look.

I spent my summer researching cannabis and medical marijuana in Canada, and spent time at the vapor lounge Get Melted in Toronto. I visited medical cannabis companies and people developing growing technologies. All agree that medical cannabis could be the next big thing. Many of the people I spoke to smoke recreationally, but not all of them. They do all see the market potential in this new frontier.

But bags of money aside, people who are turning to cannabis for medical relief are swearing that this age old natural remedy has the power to change lives, like that of a little American girl (about 5) called Charlotte who was convulsing herself to death with 200 epileptic seizures a day.After using cannabis which was bred to be low in THC (that which gets you “high”) and high in CBD (that which gives you therapy) Charlotte is now able to start living a normal life. She experiences about one epileptic seizure a week now and has a very popular medication named after her, Charlotte’s Web CBD Oil.

After using cannabis which was bred to be low in THC (that which gets you “high”) and high in CBD (that which gives you therapy) Charlotte is now able to start living a normal life. She experiences about one epileptic seizure a week now.

Now when it comes to inhaling vaporizing is a big deal among cannabis uses because vapor gives a clean and concentrated dose. Usually people buy the product and then vaporize it in their own devices. Syqe Medical (pronounced si-kee), backed by the Israeli government with about $1 million USD will provide metered doses to those who need it via pre-loaded cartridges.

The device itself can be printed on 3D printers anywhere.

As for the pot – well that depends on country and state legislation on how you will obtain those cartridges.

The Internet of Weed

The Syqe device can sit in your pocket like an asthma inhaler for convenience. They say it’s the world’s first medical device which delivers doses with pharmaceutical conditions,  based on clinical data the company is collecting.

Testing the Syqe device in the lab:

Syqe claims to deliver high resolution of dosage – to get the precise balance between symptom relief and psychoactive effects – the balance between the TCH and the CBD.

An app connects to the data and user experience lets the doctor augment dosage if necessary remotely. Syqe it will also collect data on the strains and their medicinal effects. The device is supposed to be ready for sale by the end of this year.

Israel is a hotbed of technologies for cannabis. The latest great is a company called flux developing Eddy to personalize your medss. We will keep reporting on them as they unfold.

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The tide is turning on American cannabis laws. More and more states are opting for medicinal and recreational use of marijuana and whether you are for or against it, there is an interesting effect: technologies being applied for growing cannabis will help make our planet make better food.

Take the Israeli startup EdenShield. The company has taken a special desert plant growing in Israel, Sinai and Jordan, and produces from it natural compounds that repels insects. The plant has evolved special natural chemicals to protect it from being eaten in the harsh desert climate. Think nose plugs for bugs.

While traditional farmers may be slow to adopt EdenShield’s natural extracts, grown and extracted in Israel and then used on netting in the field or applied in the greenhouse, large grow operations for medical cannabis have been taking note.

EdenShield applying its product in the field:

EdenShield is currently looking for financing, but is doing so with a buzz of interest from the medical marijuana community in Canada and the US. Here’s what EdenShield’s CEO, Yaniv Kitron and Guy Malchi, VP of strategy had to say to Green Prophet.

“Around six months ago I got a call from a large Venture Capital firm in Colorado. They wanted to know if our product was suitable for the cannabis plant,” Malchi tells Green Prophet. “We checked the literature and realized that cannabis suffers from ‘the three musketeers’ – thrips, white flies, and slider mites.

“These are the same bugs that we have a lot of experience with and have already demonstrated how our product is effective against them in the field,” he says.

EdenShield’s products which can also be applied onto a crop in the case of roses, is particularly important for the medical marijuana business where customers and regulations are demanding the decreased use of pesticides – who wants to smoke or ingest chemicals that can’t be washed off?

But on the other hand, Malchi points out, because cannabis was a banned substance there is no regulation on what can be used to protect it against pests.

Kitron says; “We hope this market has opened up for us. We’ve started to work with two licensed growers in Israel to demonstrate the efficacy of our product.”

While it certainly wasn’t a business direction they thought about at first, EdenShield is running towards opportunities in medical cannabis production which they think will create business in the more traditional sectors they aim for like food production in commercial farms, or in smaller organic food farms.

Malchi has been to a business networking meeting in Toronto a few months ago, “I can tell you that I approached the licensed holders and I got such great feedback and a huge interest. Now we are in the process of deal making.”

Coming from the world of medical and business innovation, and with Kitron a religious Jew, neither have a problem with pot per se, as long as it’s legal and medical: “The fact that it’s medical means that there is a high level of technical production. We are supplying something that is for medicine which has a good connotation. Maybe more than a technology for growing a bell pepper or tomato,” says Malchi.

EdenShield thinks its product could be especially great for Canadian grow operations where almost all large licensed facilities it seems are indoors: “Indoors our product is much more durable. For us the medical cannabis direction is a good fit,” says Kitron, pictured below.

EdenShield’s compounds are resistance-free, the company says, meaning that bugs never learn how to adapt and tolerate them.

Based on initial surveys the EdenShield technology which does not kill, but which confuses pests to where its food source is, is effective in deterring white flies (by 90 percent) and thrips by 80%.

The team is currently trying their product in Israel and in Africa and are farming the natural substance (plant name is secret) in the northeast Negev Desert. In a kibbutz. They have recently expanded their production from 3 to 30 dunams and are anticipating $1 million USD in sales next year.

And talking about business for cannabis is “sexy” says Malchi. “It certainly introduces our novel approach in a much more bold manner compared to other more conventional crops.

“But the concept is the same. People want to see less pollutants in their plants, and in their food. Ours is a botanical extract which is not only vegan friendly, it’s insect friendly and great for the kosher food market.”

Beyond pot, they’ve also seen an interest in their product for the flower industry in Africa. Europeans with a bad conscience, it turns out, will pay more so that African workers won’t be exposed to pesticides in their flower fields. The flower industry is a dirty one which needs cleaned up.

EdenShield is one of many companies I am seeing that are taking their tech from agtech to “pot”. It’s just a matter of time before the food producers of the world take notice.

Seed breeding, hydroponics and agriculture nutrient companies are also gaining a foothold in new markets from the medical cannabis boon. Technologies derived from the cannabis business, I am sure, will push food production forward the same way space technology aids imaging and medical devices, and defence technologies improve communications. I hope investor types that support platforms like AgFunder are taking note.

Above image of cannabis tech from Shutterstock. Thanks to Trendlines for the tip.

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Maybe we’d have a little more tolerance and understanding in this world if ISIS just smoked some of the plants instead. Or maybe the plan is to smoke some of the spoils. Watch the video above as ISIS burns alleged cannabis plant fields in Syria.

I was in Syria 15 years ago as a tourist and didn’t see a trace of cannabis anywhere in the ultra conservative country. It could be grown for shipping the pot abroad to attractive markets nearby in Lebanon, Jordan and Israel.

A startup company I am building called flux is developing a technology that could be used to help consumers (where it’s legal) grow medical cannabis. Sign up here at flux to be updated when we launch.

Meanwhile I am going to look around for the pot hummous recipe I saw online somewhere. Oh here it is. Very appropriate for these crazy times.

Want to know more about cannabis in the Middle East? Our Israeli correspondent Miriam goes on a tour of Tikkun Olam, one of 8 licensed grow ops in Israel. Read the whole story here.

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Governor Mohamed Boudra of Hoceima-Taounate, the country’s northern region that is rich with high-enducing resin, told Business Week that it hopes to push through a bill in the next three years that would legalize medicinal marijuana for export.

Currently, the $10 billion trade takes place underground.

Although farmers are persecuted by the government, often losing their carefully-tended crops to slashing and burning – the go-to method of control, scores continue to take their chances. Why? Because there is a real market for marijuana – locally and abroad.

The government has attempted to persuade farmers to switch to almonds and olives, according to Business Week, but hashish has proved too lucrative and successful. So Boudra wants to pump the profit out of pushers’ pockets and into the trade deficit, which the paper reports to devour 23 percent of the national GDP.

Instead of letting allowing middlemen and drug traffickers make all the profit off this  pay up to $1,780 for a kilogram of hashish.

Before any bill can be passed, lawmakers say that it’s first important to do the necessary legwork in order to find the right market for their marijuana. Obviously a Muslim country can’t sell THC-laced drugs to the warlords of central Africa. Instead, activists recommend a study of the herb’s medicinal benefits.

“We have to ensure that any legalization is done in an optimal fashion,”Abdelhalim Allaoui, a lawmaker with the ruling Justice and Development Party, told Business Week.

“We need to establish what the medicinal virtues of the plant are and then think of exports, pharmaceutical industry developments, and how to draw foreign investment. This is a promising sector for the economy.”

Legal medical marijuana in Morocco would be a first in the Muslim world, and will obviously be approached very gently, but Israel has one of the world’s most progressive medical marijuana programs.

Farms thrive in relative secret though laws governing them were relaxed in the beginning of 2012.

:: Business Week

Image of marijuana plants via Shutterstock

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A queer smell arose from the bomb shelter of the Kiryat Gat school for Haredi girls located about 35 miles south of Tel Aviv, The Jerusalem Post reports.

One teacher followed her nose, so to speak, and stumbled upon a professional growing lab in a bomb shelter below the school, which was complete with all the special lamps and irrigation technology required to grow twelve marijuana plants in a dark, enclosed space.

But here’s where it gets funny. Perhaps to divert negativity away from the Orthodox community, law enforcement officials were quick to say they will explore the possibility that a stranger to the school had coveted the space for their illegal drug operation.

In fact, they are going to launch a full-scale undercover operation to root out the bad guy (girl?) with an attitude reminiscent of that recently directed towards 269life vegan activists who protested the meat industry with decapitated animal heads scattered in visible public places in Tel Aviv and surrounding neighborhoods.

Most rabbis consider all kinds of smoking to be a form of self-endangerment, so – given marijuana’s mild mind altering qualities caused by the presence of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – it’s probably safe to say that finding a pot growing lab at an Orthodox school is pretty darn scandalous.

However, and this is the case with so much in Israel, the country has a split personality when it comes to marijuana.

Expressly illegal, though rarely penalized when used for personal consumption, the plant is legally cultivated for people suffering from chronic illness. The heavily guarded Tikkun Olam farm in the Galilee, where Jesus once walked, is the biggest source of the country’s medical marijuana.

The government dishes out special licenses to ensure those suffering from cancer and other crippling diseases can seek relief from the plant’s palliative properties.

Researchers with the Hebrew University have even developed a marijuana pill, according to the New York Times, in preparation for the day when the world is evolved enough to permit export of such a thing.

As for the girls, they’ll be on their best behavior while the cops are snooping around. Unless they found our Moroccan love potion spiced with pot?

Image of indoor marijuana garden, Shutterstock

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