Is CBD Legal in Israel? The 0.3% THC Rule Explained

CBD is the one part of Israeli cannabis law that genuinely loosened, and it is also the part most often described wrongly. "CBD is legal in Israel" is true in the sense that matters most — cannabidiol is no longer a dangerous drug — but the exemption is defined by a single number, and it stops short of several product categories people assume it covers. This guide sets out what changed, where the line falls, and what still is not settled.

The quick answer (2026):

• CBD itself is not a controlled substance. It was removed from Israel's Dangerous Drugs Ordinance in 2022.
• The exemption is capped at 0.3% THC. Above that, a product is cannabis, not CBD, and the drug law applies in full.
• CBD as an ingredient in food, dietary supplements and cosmetics was deliberately excluded from the 2022 approval, and has never been given a clean public clearance since.
• A prescription is not required for a compliant CBD product — which is precisely why the lab report matters.

This guide is general information about Israeli regulation, not legal or medical advice. Verify current rules with the Israeli Ministry of Health before importing, selling or relying on any product.

What the law looked like before 2022

The starting point is stricter than most readers expect. Israel's Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1973 did not name CBD at all — it prohibited any part of the cannabis plant or its extract, with a single exception for oil pressed from the seeds. Because CBD is extracted from leaves and flowers, that blanket wording caught it, even though CBD is not psychoactive and nobody argued it belonged on a narcotics schedule. Medical cannabis containing THC was lawful by prescription; ordinary CBD was not lawful at all. Industry advocates spent years pointing out that this was backwards, and in December 2021 submitted a position paper to the Health Ministry's CBD committee asking for the contradiction to be resolved (HempToday).

The 2022 decision, and where 0.3% came from

The committee that settled it was chaired by Prof. Joshua Shemer, chairman of Assuta Medical Centers, and began work on 21 December 2021. It recommended removing CBD from the ordinance provided the THC concentration did not exceed 0.2% (Jerusalem Post).

On 28 February 2022, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz signed off on most of the panel's recommendations — but raised the permitted THC ceiling from 0.2% to 0.3%, bringing Israel into line with the threshold used in much of Europe and the United States. He also asked Health Ministry director-general Prof. Nachman Ash to convene a task force to track regulatory change abroad and keep Israeli policy aligned with it (Ynet).

That single number is the whole exemption. Below 0.3% THC, a product is an ordinary consumer good. Above it, it is cannabis, and every restriction described in is cannabis legal in Israel? applies. This is why "CBD is fine here" is only as reliable as the certificate of analysis behind a specific batch: full-spectrum products with measurable THC are not automatically covered, and the burden of proof sits on the product, not on the category.

The carve-out most explainers leave out

The 2022 approval was narrower than the headlines suggested. The same panel found there was not enough safety evidence to allow CBD as an ingredient in food, dietary supplements and cosmetics, and recommended against permitting it in those categories for the following two years, after which the question would be reconsidered (Ynet; Jerusalem Post). Prof. Ash, welcoming the reclassification, said explicitly that the compound needed further study before it went into food and cosmetics.

That two-year window lapsed on its own terms in early 2024. We have not found a subsequent Health Ministry decision publicly clearing CBD as a food, supplement or cosmetic ingredient — so the honest position is that removal from the drug ordinance and clearance as a consumer ingredient are two different approvals, and only the first is documented. A CBD gummy or CBD face cream is therefore not automatically lawful merely because CBD is no longer a narcotic; it still has to satisfy whatever regime governs that product class.

The panel added one more recommendation worth repeating, because it was aimed directly at consumers: it proposed a public-information campaign on the side effects of CBD products and the risks of buying them independently online (Ynet). Unregulated cross-border CBD is exactly the category where labelled potency and actual potency diverge.

What happened after: the 2024 redefinition

The story did not end in 2022. In August 2023 the Health Ministry announced a broader medical cannabis reform aimed at cutting regulation across the sector, and said it would also redefine "dangerous drugs" and the treatment of CBD. That step followed the end of the Shemer committee's transition period and the work of a follow-up team led by Dr. Boaz Lev, which examined leaving only cannabis with psychoactive content — THC above 0.3% — inside the ordinance, from February 2024 (Jerusalem Post).

We have not been able to verify the published text of that amendment, so we describe it as reported rather than as confirmed law. Either way, the operative figure a buyer, importer or traveller should work to is unchanged: 0.3% THC, the threshold the health minister adopted in 2022.

What this means if you are visiting

For a visitor, CBD is the one cannabis-adjacent product that can lawfully be carried into Israel — and it is the only one. Israel does not recognise foreign medical cannabis prescriptions, and the Health Ministry's own travel-medication guidance does not extend to cannabis products. A compliant CBD item below the THC threshold sits outside that problem entirely; a full-spectrum oil bought abroad may not. Sold as a food, supplement or cosmetic, it runs into the carve-out above. The practical rules for travellers are set out in cannabis in Israel for tourists.

The bottom line

Israel took CBD off its narcotics schedule in 2022 and set the boundary at 0.3% THC — a real liberalisation, and a genuine outlier in a legal framework that has otherwise moved toward tighter control. But the exemption is narrower than its reputation. It covers the compound, not every product made from it; it was expressly withheld from food, supplements and cosmetics; and it is enforced by a laboratory number rather than by a category name. If you are buying, selling or importing, the certificate of analysis is the document that decides the question.

For the wider legal picture, see our Regulation hub and is cannabis legal in Israel?. For what CBD and THC actually do in the body, see the endocannabinoid system explained.