Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World by Avi` Jorisch

Author:Avi` Jorisch [Jorisch, Avi`]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Gefen Publishing House LTD
Published: 2018-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

HOLY SMOKES

Not long after Mechoulam’s human experiments with THC, the Israeli scientist applied for a grant with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The response was not exactly welcoming. “Cannabis is not important to us,” he recalls an NIH official telling him. “When you have something relevant, call us . . . marijuana is not an American problem.”22

“How little did they know!”23 Mechoulam remembers thinking. At the time, not a single US lab was working on cannabis. But a year later, the NIH decided to fund Mechoulam’s research. The professor soon found out why. Dan Efron, the head of pharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health, came to see Mechoulam at his Jerusalem lab. “What happened, all of a sudden, that you have great interest?” Mechoulam asked.24 “The son of somebody who was important, a senator or somebody else [like that], called NIH and asked, ‘What do you know about cannabis?’ His son had been caught smoking pot and he wanted to know whether his brain was being damaged.”25

Thankfully, someone remembered that an Israeli professor had applied for a grant to study the plant. Mechoulam had just isolated THC for the first time and discovered its structure. Efron promised financial support for further research, and in return, Mechoulam sent the NIH the entire world supply of synthesized THC, about ten grams. The NIH used Mechoulam’s THC sample to conduct many of the original cannabis experiments in the States. In return, “they were very nice and I got a grant, which I’ve had ever since.”26

Since then, the NIH and Israeli authorities have given Mechoulam as much marijuana as he wants, free of charge.27 The steady supply has helped him create a new field of science that has far-reaching implications for treating pain, lack of appetite, nausea, and other medical ailments. “[Raphael] Mechoulam has collaborated with a large number of US and international scientists,” says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. “His work has been inspirational to a great number of young and not-so-young scientists.”28

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