‘Father of cannabis science’ Raphael Mechoulam dies at 92

Raphael Mechoulam, the first man to synthesize THC and earned him the nickname “Father of Cannabis Science,” has died, reports Analytical Cannabis. He lived to be 92 and his legacy will surely live on for centuries to come. The respected chemist is also known as the father of cannabis research. Some of his additional pioneering contributions to drug science include the isolation and synthesis of other cannabinoids such as cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerol (CBG), and cannabichromene (CBC).

While THC, CBD, and CBG are basically household names today, that wouldn’t be the case if Dr. Mechoulam wouldn’t have given, so smoke one for him in memory. As a professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, his work laid the groundwork and started the ball (or blunt) rolling to enable future breakthroughs such as the enlightenment of the human body’s internal cannabinoid receptors in the 1980s and 90s, which he detailed in the 1993 paper entitled Molecular characterization of a peripheral receptor for cannabinoids.

Make sure you pay your respects today as did the friends and colleagues of Dr. Mechoulam are when you pass the peace pipe around with your friends. “This is a very sad day for me, for the scientific community and for the cannabis community. Professor Raphael Mechoulam, or as we called him Raphi, was one of the greatest scientists[s] I ever met and in many ways was my teacher and mentor. I really believe him [deserved] a Nobel prize!” wrote David “Dedi” Meiri, associate professor at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, and a colleague of Mechoulam’s, in a touching online statement. “Thank you Raphi for all the great things you have done and discovered[ed] in your life and thank you for all the help and support you have given me. Rest in peace my dear friend,” he continues.

Mechoulam was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1930 and moved with his family to Israel, where he began studying chemistry. His inspiration to begin his successful search for THC began after wise observation of the mechanisms of other drugs. In a 2014 interview with CNN, Mechoulam pointed out: “Morphine had been isolated from opium in the nineteenth century, early nineteenth century, cocaine had been isolated from coca leaves [in the] mid-nineteenth century. And here we were, in the mid-twentieth century, and yet the chemistry of cannabis was not known. This is what it looked like [an] interesting project.” According to the National Library of Medicine, he succeeded in 1964. And the story behind how Mechoulam obtained the cannabis he was studying may surprise you.

While working as a chemist at the Weizmann Institute in the early 1960s, Mechoulam got some weed from the Israeli police with a goal he already had: to discover and isolate what makes pot psychoactive. In 1992, after identifying THC and other cannabinoids like the aforementioned CBD and CBG, Mechoulam and his team discovered the chemical arachidonoylethanolamine you know as anandamide (derived from the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning bliss). Anandamide is something that our body’s endocannabinoid system produces itself (as if we were built to use cannabis) and activates the CB1 receptor.

Deeply passionate and diligent, Mechoulam continued his research until his death. At the age of 88, he announced another breakthrough in 2019 at the CannMed cannabis conference in California, synthetically stable cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), the main phytocannabinoid in fiber and seed oil hemp that has anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, and anticancer properties, and that’s probably just those Tip of the iceberg. “We took the unstable acid molecules of the cannabis plant and synthesized them to provide a stable, consistent basis for exploring new therapies for a wide range of medical needs,” Mechoulam explained at the conference. He also used his stage time to encourage the scientific community to invest more in cannabis research as enough time has already been wasted, noting the many people in the past who would have benefited tremendously from medicinal cannabis if it had been available were. “Did we have to wait 30 years? No,” he said. “We could have helped thousands of children, but we didn’t.”

Rest in power, Dr. Mechoulam, and may all those fortunate enough to have access to the results of his work enjoy the power of plant medicine today.