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Title: The Times of Israel: Netherlands and Israel, a Marriage of Cannabis
Source:
The Times of Israel
URL Source: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/neth ... israel-a-marriage-of-cannabis/
Published: Oct 25, 2015
Author: Clifton Flack
Post Date: 2015-10-26 08:34:55 by Operation 40
Keywords: cannabis, Netherlands, Israel
Views: 198
Netherlands and Israel, a Marriage of Cannabis Clifton Flack | The Times of Israel Reporting from a 5 day fact finding mission in the Netherlands exploring the medical cannabis program and the players in the industry, together with Saul Kaye, our CEO and Jason Ryker, our CFO/COO. Since we announced our partnership with Israel’s Cannabis Medical Unit and our subsequent postponement of the CannaTech Summit until March, we find ourselves with the time opportunity to investigate interesting markets and build new international relationships. Our trip began with a walking tour of the tourist Coffeeshops, where legal recreational cannabis is sold ‘legally’. During the week we met with Bedrocan, the only licensed medical cannabis grower in the country. We also met with a number of great companies involved in seed breeding, ecommerce, culture and clinical trials / research. The law in Netherlands is complex, cannabis is still illegal, however its sale, possession and use has been decriminalized for decades. We’d been expecting to find a developed, mature industry, instead we found a system broken and in desperate need of innovation. Whilst Cannabis has been widely available in Netherlands for over 30 years, its quasi-legalization has resulted in an unknown supply chain. Literally, nobody officially knows who supplies the coffeeshops. When nobody knows, nobody regulates, leading to standardization loss and non-existent quality control. These establishments are little more than street dealers with social legitimacy pushing a product that nobody really understands beyond it’s super-high effect. Compound that with the government’s active quashing of cannabis tourism means that whilst the country earns significant revenues from tourism, the massive potential to earn is lost. Cannabis sales are not subject to tax and the coffeeshops are shabby with cliché Bob Marley music breaking eardrums...snip ...We met with GHMedical, a young vibrant team on a mission to map every cannabis strain and how it acts upon each cannabinoid receptor in the brain. To picture the task at hand, imagine the human genome project but one where the result is a complex matrix of cannabis medicine targeting hundreds of medical indications (illness / disease) GHMedical are currently raising investment and hoping to partner with research institutions around the world….Israeli innovators be ready, there’s opportunity here. (Bolding by author) We met with a number of other entrepreneurs, social activists and innovators all with an eagerness to do business. Everyone we met was supportive of Israel generally with a fully 100% non-BDS attitude toward our innovation nation. We’re seeing every day the unequivocal international respect for Israel’s Hebrew University and specifically the fame of Professor Rafi Mechoulam...SNIP
Read More: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/netherlands-and-israel-a-marriage-of-cannabis/
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