Israel buying marijuana

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Israel buying marijuana

Emma Stone. Currently, the only exception is cannabis for specified medical use and pain-related illnesses, which the country has permitted since the s. Only authorized professionals, such as pharmacists or doctors, can prescribe medical marijuana to patients. At the same time, marijuana is partially decriminalized for personal use in possession of 15 grams or less, with a fine in place for first offenses. Full marijuana legalization in Israel has been on the table in recent years, although plans failed to pass due to changes in government. The Israeli government formally legalized medicinal cannabis in Today, more than , people in Israel access medicinal cannabis legally via a government-issued permit for specific medical usage and pain-related illnesses, such as:. However, in August , the government issued new regulations allowing physicians to prescribe cannabis directly and distribute it through pharmacies. If passed, the new law would make it much easier for medical patients to access cannabis. The medical cannabis industry in Israel is prevalent among its citizens, reaching an all-time high of , in April. Israel is also a global leader in medical cannabis research and innovation. Mechoulam and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were also instrumental in discovering anandamide, 2-AG, the endocannabinoid system ECS , and furthering our understanding of the structure of various cannabinoids. Still, this middle eastern nation imports more medical cannabis products than any country worldwide. Marijuana is the most widely accepted drug in the country, with Israelis inhaling the most weed per capita in the world. Cannabis use has been socially permissible in Israel for decades despite its illegal status. People openly roll joints and smoke at patio tables in cities like Tel Aviv, and police often ignore the infractions. However, the authorities usually take a stricter approach in less metropolitan places like Galilee and southern Israel. Israel has permitted limited cannabis use for medicinal purposes since the s. Except for medical use, Israel prohibits consuming or selling any parts of the cannabis plant, excluding the oil extracted from its seeds. Offenders can face fines and prison time , depending on the amount and circumstance:. According to the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance , cultivating cannabis in Israel is a serious offense. However, in , the police prosecution department issued an order stating that it would treat growing cannabis in small amounts in a private residence as a minor violation and not a serious offense. Although recreational marijuana is technically illegal, cannabis use is common throughout Israel, and the government passed regulations in recent years to decriminalize it for personal use. Article written by Emma Stone.

Israel Takes the Next Steps Towards Legalizing Recreational Cannabis

Israel buying marijuana

In bars and cafes across Israel, the air is thick with cannabis smoke. For years, smoking weed has been socially permissible in Israel despite being technically illegal. Patio tables in cities like Tel Aviv are dotted with people openly rolling joints and lighting up without a second thought. Ironically, smoking pot is tolerated in more public places in Israel than in countries like Canada, where recreational cannabis is legal. While there is a budding cannabis culture in the West Bank — tobacco stores there openly sell weed paraphernalia like rolling papers and grinders — Palestinians, who live under military rule, face serious legal jeopardy if they are caught firing up. In the dusty occupied hills west of the Jordan River, segregation shapes the smoking experience of Palestinians as much as every other aspect of Palestinian life. The disparity in treatment for Palestinians and Israelis when it comes to cannabis constitutes a facet of this system that might be called weed apartheid. A Palestinian and Israeli breaking the same law in the same place in the West Bank, for instance, will be dealt with by different security forces and processed in different legal systems. Shakir was deported from Israel because of his work with Human Rights Watch, an organization that has accused Israel of the crime of apartheid. Even former Israeli military officers acknowledge the reality of the dual legal systems for cannabis. Hirsch was the top lawyer in a system in which cases get argued in front of military officers rather than civilian judges and convictions can send Palestinians civilians to military prisons. He contends that much of the time, however, a Palestinian arrested for cannabis in a case where there is no perceived Israeli victim will be handed over to the Palestinian Authority police. The former prosecutor gave an example of two people in the West Bank, an Israeli and a Palestinian, who get caught with cannabis. The Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three areas. Area B is divided between Israeli security and Palestinian administrative control. Area A, which denotes major Palestinian population centers, falls under the administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority, the body that administers limited Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territory. While Palestinians can be handed over by Israeli forces to the Palestinian Authority, for more serious drug offenses considered to have an impact on Israel — like cannabis smuggling or large-scale cultivation — they are likely to end up in military court where conviction is almost a forgone conclusion. The Israeli military, Israeli national police force, and Palestinian Authority police all declined to comment for this article or provide any statistics on cannabis-related offenses. No matter which system they end up in, Palestinians charged with cannabis-related crimes face harsh sentences. Palestinians charged with minor possession by the Palestinian Authority, for instance, regularly face three- to six-month prison sentences. Palestinian police show hundreds of seized cannabis plants at the police headquarters in the West Bank city of Hebron on March 31, The plants, which were confiscated in the Hebron area, were being cultivated by a Palestinian farmer in cooperation with Israelis, the Hebron police said. For Palestinians, weed apartheid in the West Bank is all downside. Not only do they live under a harsher criminal justice regime for cannabis, but access to quality bud is also a complicated process. Ali, a year-old West Bank Palestinian who asked that his real name not be used for fear of legal repercussions, used to rely on friends from occupied East Jerusalem to connect to a dealer and then risk crossing a checkpoint to bring him the contraband. Because Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, along with Palestinian citizens of Israel, are allowed to travel freely between the West Bank and Israel, they had access to the same weed as Jewish Israelis. Palestinians from the West Bank, however, need permits to cross the checkpoints that separate them from both East Jerusalem and Israel. When Ali became fed up with choosing between the risk and the inconsistency of the product, he decided to grow himself. When the Palestinian Authority busts these West Bank grow-ops, it is often only the Palestinians involved who face consequences. Without repercussions, the Israelis soon return to reestablish their operations. The Palestinian court system, however, has fewer safeguards to enforce evidentiary standards, so the Palestinians caught up in the busts can still face consequences. Arik is a cog in an online machine that provides hundreds of thousands of cannabis consumers in Israel — and its West Bank settlements — with recreational bud. Arik came to the checkpoint because it was as close to Ramallah as he was willing to go for a sale. Requesting anonymity because dealing cannabis is illegal, Arik described his last trip to Ramallah: He had arrived armed in an Israeli military jeep to carry out a nighttime arrest raid. Palestinians have no such luxury: The checkpoints are a mainstay of their lives, whether they are from East Jerusalem and can travel freely, or from the West Bank and lucky enough to have a permit to go to Israel proper. He will deliver to settlements. The Israeli Jewish colonies in the West Bank are considered illegal by the international community but are treated by Israel as part of the country. Arik uses checkpoints designed for Israeli settlers rather than Palestinian traffic and, once in the West Bank, mostly takes segregated roads that exclusively serve Israelis. The lush green buds covered in frosty crystals that can be ordered up on Telegras represent a major cannabis culture shift in Israel. Not much more than a decade ago, most of the cannabis came in the form of traditional bricks of hashish, shipped along clandestine Arab-world trade routes and arriving in the hands of neighborhood dealers. That started to change in , recalled Ben Hartman, an Israeli American journalist who has written extensively about cannabis in Israel. The increased patrols not only shut out desperate refugees fleeing persecution in Sudan and Eritrea, but also curtailed the trade in hash from Egypt. A clandestine cross-border trade has continued on a small scale — bags of hash thrown over the northern fence, and bags of cash tossed back — but the smuggling routes in the south and the north of Israel mostly dried up. Suddenly, Israeli and Palestinian dealers lacked the stock to keep their customers satisfied. Prices soared, and Israelis began looking for alternatives. Weed has long been a part of life in Israel, though historically it had been low quality and full of seeds. By the time the hash drought hit, strong, flavorful strains from the U. Now, a would-be stoner can summon top-notch weed from dealers on a mobile phone. A cannabis-growing setup run by Ali in a closet in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, in Scoring pot is considerably more complicated for Palestinians in the occupied territories. Instead, these customers do things the old-fashioned way: either through neighborhood dealers or by relying on person-to-person hookups in Palestinian border communities or the impoverished refugee camps for Palestinians whose families were dispossessed in the Arab-Israeli War. They are also known to young, middle-class Palestinians as places where security forces turn more of a blind eye to drugs. Palestinians in the West Bank are increasingly yearning for leafy green buds, but the compressed resin of hash remains popular. The unchanged distribution system plays a large role in the throwback appetites. She only switched from hash to bud just over a year ago, first turning to her friends in East Jerusalem to hook her up. The expansion over the last few years of local Palestinian growers cultivating weed for the Palestinian market also facilitated her switch because she became able to grab grass in both the West Bank and through East Jerusalem. For years, Zenia would send a friend to Anata, a village that borders Jerusalem, or the Qalandia refugee camp on the West Bank side of the wall, to grab a stick of hash. She studiously avoided direct contact with her dealer; she feared that, since the village and camp were subject to regular raids, her number might be found in his phone. Zeina said that she used to be comfortable smoking the odd joint on a quiet street. Since a crackdown in recent years on both political opposition and cannabis use, she has become nervous to smoke even in private apartments, insisting on keeping the curtains closed. The Palestinian Authority creates and distributes leaflets that stigmatize cannabis users as lacking religion, coming from broken homes, and being uneducated. The police and courts frequently seek to make an example of arrested smokers and dealers. Yet perhaps the most resonant piece of official Palestinian anti-weed propaganda is that using or selling cannabis is an act of collaboration with Israel and helps the occupier. For Ali, however, growing and smoking is an act of resistance to an apartheid system run by Israel and subcontracted to the Palestinian Authority. His grow operation stands as a rejection of differentiated rights based on ID and nationality; if Israelis can enjoy an easygoing approach to weed, so can he. For Zeina, the carefree feeling is more fleeting. On that side of Israeli barriers, Zeina goes to bars run by Palestinian citizens of Israel in the mixed Israeli city of Haifa. Just as Israelis can smoke freely at bars there, so too can Palestinians. The feeling, however, ends the instant she leaves the bar and encounters the racism Palestinians experience amid Jewish Israeli society. The temporary reprieve, though, is not freedom for her, especially when traveling to Haifa without an Israeli permit carries far greater risks. Rather, Zeina demands the right to smoke what she pleases as part of the struggle for self-determination and equality, not a regional privilege determined by her occupier. Correction: October 30, , a. The End of Roe. Israel and the United States are already speaking about a Lebanon post-Hezbollah. Search for:. Support Us. Illustration: Ricardo Santos for The Intercept. Jesse Rosenfeld. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. I'm in. Most Read. Contact the author: Jesse Rosenfeld jrosyfield on X. Shawn Musgrave - Oct. Sam Biddle - Oct.

Israel buying marijuana