WHATFG
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That’s why American companies are turning to Israeli researchers and organizations. Mechoulam, for example, works with three U.S. companies developing cannabinoid drugs. One of them is Kalytera, a California-based company for which he serves as the head of research. Even the U.S. government relies on Israel for its medical marijuana exploration. The NIH, which rarely provides overseas grants, has been funding Mechoulam’s research for 50 years. It started in 1963, when Mechoulam applied for NIH funding and was told that cannabis research wasn’t of interest to the agency because marijuana wasn’t an “American problem,” recalls Mechoulam. “They told me to let them know when I have something more relevant to the U.S.” A year later, Mechoulam received another call from the same official. A U.S. senator, whose name the official withheld from Mechoulam, had caught his son smoking weed. The senator had asked the NIH what effect the drug might have on his son’s brain. To the embarrassment of America’s top public health agency, no one could answer the question; there was no research on file. The NIH official asked Mechoulam if he was still working on cannabis. Today, the NIH gives Mechoulam’s team approximately $100,000 per year to study, for example, how cannabinoids can lower human resistance to antibiotics.
Meanwhile, Cannabics, a Maryland-based company that conducts all of its R&D in Israel, is using the Middle Eastern country as a testing ground for the world’s first large-scale clinical trial of cannabis to treat cancer patients. Medical marijuana is already widely used to manage the pain and nausea that come as side effects to chemo and radiation therapy, but many medical scientists believe there are compounds in the marijuana plant that could kill cancer itself. Eyal Ballan, the Israeli co-founder and chief scientist at Cannabics, established the company in the U.S. because it represents an exponentially larger market than will ever be found among Israel’s 8 million residents. He chose to keep all of the company’s research and clinical trials in Israel, though, because “it’s essentially impossible to do it in the U.S.,” he says. “The doctors, scientists and the government are much more open-minded [in Israel].”
Leaders in the American medical marijuana community hope the U.S. will learn something from Israel. “Marijuana was an integral part of American medicine for more than 100 years, from the 1830s through the 1940s, and it was used safely and effectively for all of that time,” says Dr. Alan Shackelford, a Harvard-trained physician who prescribes medical marijuana in Colorado. But today, bipartisan legislation (the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States Act) meant to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II drug remains stalled in Congress, “not for any scientific reason but pretty much out of ignorance of what is actually intended, which is to allow scientific inquiry and study,” Shackelford says.
Having seen the clear medical benefits of cannabis over more than 50 years of research, Mechoulam is baffled that there’s still reluctance to embrace marijuana as medicine. “We believe modern science is going ahead, right?” he asks. “Well, it’s not. When insulin was discovered in the 1920s, it became a drug in months. Cortisone was discovered in the late 1940s, and it was made into a drug a year or two later. Anandamide was discovered 23 years ago and has still never been administered to a human being. I’m not sure that’s progress.”
Meanwhile, Cannabics, a Maryland-based company that conducts all of its R&D in Israel, is using the Middle Eastern country as a testing ground for the world’s first large-scale clinical trial of cannabis to treat cancer patients. Medical marijuana is already widely used to manage the pain and nausea that come as side effects to chemo and radiation therapy, but many medical scientists believe there are compounds in the marijuana plant that could kill cancer itself. Eyal Ballan, the Israeli co-founder and chief scientist at Cannabics, established the company in the U.S. because it represents an exponentially larger market than will ever be found among Israel’s 8 million residents. He chose to keep all of the company’s research and clinical trials in Israel, though, because “it’s essentially impossible to do it in the U.S.,” he says. “The doctors, scientists and the government are much more open-minded [in Israel].”
Leaders in the American medical marijuana community hope the U.S. will learn something from Israel. “Marijuana was an integral part of American medicine for more than 100 years, from the 1830s through the 1940s, and it was used safely and effectively for all of that time,” says Dr. Alan Shackelford, a Harvard-trained physician who prescribes medical marijuana in Colorado. But today, bipartisan legislation (the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States Act) meant to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II drug remains stalled in Congress, “not for any scientific reason but pretty much out of ignorance of what is actually intended, which is to allow scientific inquiry and study,” Shackelford says.
Having seen the clear medical benefits of cannabis over more than 50 years of research, Mechoulam is baffled that there’s still reluctance to embrace marijuana as medicine. “We believe modern science is going ahead, right?” he asks. “Well, it’s not. When insulin was discovered in the 1920s, it became a drug in months. Cortisone was discovered in the late 1940s, and it was made into a drug a year or two later. Anandamide was discovered 23 years ago and has still never been administered to a human being. I’m not sure that’s progress.”
