Raphael Mechoulam, RIP – Cannabis | weed | marijuana

Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli chemist who first isolated THC, died at his home. He was 92 years old.

The American Friends of the Hebrew University confirmed his death. Mechoulam had been a professor at the university since 1966.

Who was Raphael Mechoulam?

Raphael Mechoulam was an Israeli organic chemist and professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Cannabis research and mechoulam are essentially synonyms.

Of course, this is likely due to his discovery and isolation of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive component of cannabis.

In the 1960s, Mechoulam and his research team were the first to identify and synthesize THC.

This not only shed light on the chemical structure and pharmacology of cannabis, but eventually led to the discovery of the endocannabinoid system.

Medicinal cannabis would not be possible without Mechoulam’s work. His work earned him the title “Father of Cannabis Research”.

Throughout his career, Mechoulam has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to the field of cannabis research, including the Rothschild Prize in Chemical Sciences and Physical Sciences, the Israel Prize in Exact Sciences, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Cannabinoid Research Society.

Why did he study cannabis?

Raphael Mechoulam’s interest in cannabis began in the 1960s when the plant was undergoing a cultural shift. But Mechoulam was more interested in science than culture.

“Morphine was isolated from opium in the 19th, early 19th century,” Mechoulam said in a 2014 interview. “Cocaine was isolated from coca leaves in the mid-19th century. And here we were, mid-20th century, and yet the chemistry of cannabis was not known. So it looked like an interesting project.”

His team isolated THC and its effects on the brain and body. They also isolated other cannabinoids and their effects, including cannabidiol, or CBD.

“I was surprised to find that a compound had apparently never been isolated in a pure form,” Mechoulam said. “And that its structure was only partially known. Even the structure of a major crystalline component, cannabidiol (CBD), which had been isolated more than two decades earlier, has not been fully elucidated.”

And while Mechoulam is known as the father or grandfather of cannabis research, he also researched the pharmacology of the khat plant, which many people in East Africa and the Middle East often use as a stimulant.

In the West it is often synthesized into cathinones or “bath salts”.

“Most of the human and scientific knowledge of cannabis has been accumulated thanks to Professor Mechoulam,” Asher Cohen, the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in a statement. “He paved the way for groundbreaking studies and initiated scientific collaborations between researchers around the world. Mechoulam was an astute and charismatic pioneer.”

How did Mechoulam study cannabis?

“When we started working many years ago, there was essentially no interest in cannabinoids,” Mechoulam said in a 2019 interview.

He applied for a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States in the 1960s. They told him that Americans weren’t interested in “marijuana.” That it’s something only Mexicans use.

Eventually, the NIH reversed course and supported Mechoulam’s research. But this general attitude that cannabis was irrelevant in the 1960s shows that the NIH has always been out of touch.

The current head of the Substance Abuse Sector is Leon Trotsky’s great-granddaughter. She has a clear fondness for the brain disease model of addiction. Based on a person’s values, research funding goes in one direction. It becomes like an ideology.

For Mechoulam, who lives in Israel, where cannabis was also illegal, he established contacts within the police departments to ensure a steady supply. As he said in an interview: “I didn’t have a car then. I was on the bus carrying five kilos of hash. People just said, ‘It’s a strange smell.’ We tested this on a few volunteers, including ourselves.”

As Mechoulam wrote in the Annual Review, “He and his team extracted the hash and, by repeated column chromatography, were able to isolate and elucidate the structures of about 10 compounds, most of them unknown.”

In 1980 he was in Brazil conducting CBD research on people with epilepsy. Within months, he and his team found that none of the study participants reported seizures.

REST IN PEACE

Of course, it is always sad to hear of the passing of a great scientist and innovator like Mechoulam. We will remember his contributions to cannabinoid research for years to come.