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Israel Cannabis News
Aggregated headlines from across the industry and general press. Each item links to the original publisher.
- Bizportal (Hebrew)Business & Markets
“There was a bubble in cannabis; I’d rather sell less, but profit”: Seach Medical’s CEO on shrinking his way to a record margin
In a Bizportal interview following Seach Medical’s half-year results, chief executive Yogev Sarid argues the sector’s bubble years — rivals chasing market share at loss-making prices — are resolving through consolidation, describes the second quarter’s roughly 7% revenue decline to ₪36.2 million as a deliberate refusal of unprofitable sales while bringing production in-house lifted gross margin from 31.1% to 40%, puts Israel’s patient population at about 145,000 and rising again after a two-year plateau, and says the cash generated is funding an examination of new growth engines outside cannabis.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Business & Markets
America has opened a legal export route for medical cannabis — and Israeli pharmacies could end up on the receiving end
A US Justice Department final rule effective 28 April 2026 moved state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule 3 and, in the same stroke, added it to the substances that may be imported and exported under DEA permit — and Cannabis Magazine reports California growers are already preparing: Glass House Brands has registered its medical cultivation and processing with the DEA, applied for an export licence, completed a first international sale of CBD-rich hemp biomass to Europe in June and hired a 26-year DEA veteran to build its compliance systems, while LEEF Brands is aiming for export-ready product in 2027; no high-THC flower has yet left the country and three consolidated petitions in the Washington federal appeals court seek to vacate the April order, but Israel's Procedure 109 would admit American flower grown to IMC-GAP or an approved equivalent, so the open question is not whether US cannabis may be imported but when certifying a facility for Israel becomes worth an American producer's money — in a market that imports roughly twice what it exports, and that shipped about 6.5 tonnes out in the first half of 2026.
- ice (Hebrew)Business & Markets
Seach Medical's half-year profit more than doubles as margins widen — on slightly lower revenue
Seach Medical Group's results for the first half of 2026 show revenue easing to about ₪75.3 million from ₪78.1 million a year earlier on a shift in product mix, while net profit attributable to shareholders rose roughly 128% to ₪9.7 million — ₪4.2 million of it in the second quarter, up about 39% year on year — as gross margin widened to 40% from 31.1% on lower purchasing and production costs and expanded output at the company's plant; operating cash flow ran to about ₪15 million for the half, and the company closed June holding some ₪33 million in cash and money-market funds alongside about ₪24 million in undrawn credit lines, with chief executive Yogev Sarid attributing the result to operational discipline across the value chain in a competitive market.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Regulation & Policy
Israeli court rules Better's founder was the true owner of cannabis shares held in his mother's name while he was barred from the industry
The Economic Division of the Tel Aviv District Court held on 25 August, in a partial judgment by Judge Yaakov Sharvit, that Yohai Gild — a founder of Kan Pharmaceuticals, which ran the Better cannabis brand — was the real owner of the block of shares transferred in January 2011 to his mother, Prof. Galia Golan-Gild, during a period when regulatory rules barred him from holding shares in a licensed cannabis company, and that the defendants had made “false representations to the IMCA regarding ownership of the company's shares”; the businessman Mordechai Brodo, who financed a ₪1.76 million share purchase registered solely in the mother's name and sued in February 2020 for 5,152 shares or some ₪9.4 million, nonetheless lost his claim after failing to prove the terms of the hidden agreement, and the parties were given 30 days to argue restitution — while the disputed shares themselves were sold in receivership back in 2023.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
The date Israeli medical-cannabis packs don't carry: flower can legally reach a patient almost three years after harvest
Cannabis Magazine reports that Israel's medical-cannabis procedure requires a harvest date on the bulk sack moving flower from farm to packing plant but leaves it off the consumer pack — which must carry only the “dangerous drug” wording, product name and category, manufacturer, batch number, expiry date, storage instructions and net weight — so that with raw material packable up to a year after harvest and finished packs given nine months by default and as much as two years on stability data, two identical-looking bags on the same shelf can differ in age by up to 22 months and both still be in date; a check of 57 product-batch-expiry combinations in the Cannabiz pharmacy catalogue found a median of about six and a half months left to run, industry figures put the fast route at five to eight weeks from harvest to shelf against a more typical three to ten months, and the Health Ministry told the magazine that the expiry date is the professional measure of quality and safety without addressing why the harvest date, documented throughout the chain, is withheld from patients.
- Globes (Hebrew)Business & Markets
Israel’s biggest cannabis grower wins a ₪230m state payout — more than the whole company is worth on the market
InterCure, controlled and run by Alexander Rabinovich, has settled with the Israel Tax Authority for ₪230 million over the destruction and prolonged shutdown of its Nir Oz cultivation plant — hit during the Swords of Iron war and then left out of service while the IDF used the site — against a ₪300 million claim of which roughly ₪101 million had already been paid as an advance; the settlement exceeds the ₪155 million the company was worth on the market that morning and sent the share up sharply, though it still trades about 15% below its pre-7 October level and some 96% below the 2019 cannabis-bubble peak, and management says the money will complete a rehabilitation it had to raise ₪58 million to begin, accelerate its Israeli and German business and prepare it for a US market it expects to open.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Regulation & Policy
Israel's legalization party is officially on the ballot — with medical-cannabis activist 'Nir the Angel' at the top of the list
Aleh Yarok — registered in 1999, never once past the electoral threshold and peaking at 47,180 votes in 2015 — confirmed on Sunday that it will contest the 27 October Knesset election with patient advocate Nir Yuftaru, known in the community as “Nir the Angel”, heading its list, and attached three published conditions to joining any future coalition: full legalization, a comprehensive overhaul of the medical-cannabis programme, and clinically supervised psychedelic therapy for trauma sufferers including October 7 survivors; Yuftaru, who chairs a patients' association and was prosecuted over years of volunteering to make concentrated cannabis oil for seriously ill patients but ultimately served no prison term, takes over a list that must be filed by 7–8 September, and the magazine's own party tracker rates Aleh Yarok first at 5.5 out of 10 with 19 of 22 parties still holding no current position on legalization.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Israel's National Insurance cannabis bill doubled in three years — driven by claimant numbers, not by price
Figures released only after Cannabis Magazine petitioned the Jerusalem District Court under freedom-of-information law show National Insurance Institute reimbursements for medical cannabis climbing from about ₪57.3 million in 2021 to ₪127.2 million in 2024 and ₪140.6 million in 2025 — a figure that covers work-injury and hostile-action victims but excludes disabled IDF veterans, reimbursed separately through the Defence Ministry — with work-injury claimants more than doubling to 9,175 while the average annual payment rose only about 5% to ₪13,404, and the steepest rise among victims of hostile action, from 153 recipients costing ₪195,000 in the month before the war to 735 costing ₪840,000 in December 2025, the peak of a series running back to January 2020.
- Maariv (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Israeli pain specialist: doctors are pushed into writing smokable-cannabis licences that leak to the black market
Writing in Maariv's opinion section, veteran Israeli pain physician Prof. Rafi Karaso argues that licensing doctors face relentless and sometimes aggressive pressure from patients and families demanding smokable cannabis with no clinical indication, says a large share of that demand is really about resale into the black market rather than treatment, and calls on the Health Ministry to steer most patients toward oils and inhalers — which he says suit them better clinically — while setting stricter, more precise criteria for dispensing flower.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Six countries an Israeli medical-cannabis patient can legally fly to — and what changes after landing
Cannabis Magazine screened 89 destinations for a traveller procedure published by a competent authority that names cannabis flower specifically, found only six that qualify — Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Portugal, New Zealand and Poland — and scored each on entry, freedom on the ground, driving and what happens if the supply runs out: Germany tops the table by admitting up to three months' supply with no advance approval, Australia is the only one with a documented route to a local prescription if the medicine runs out, and Poland ranks last because its regulator's document permits the border crossing but Polish law grants no exemption for possession once inside the country.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Regulation & Policy
Israel weighs Canada-style plain packaging for medical cannabis — a second full redesign in two years
Cannabis Magazine reports that the Health Ministry's medical-cannabis unit is examining whether to adopt Canada's plain-packaging model — one flat background colour and a single branding element, with no gradients, patterns or the illustrations Israel's July 2024 IMC-GMP procedure still permits on up to 15% of the main panel — which would force producers into a second complete redesign since the 2024 reform, while the two Canadian rules that cut the other way, mandatory exact THC and CBD percentages and the clear viewing window allowed there since March 2025, are unlikely to be adopted; the ministry says nothing has been decided and that any change would go through public consultation.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Business & Markets
Cronos posts a 10th straight record quarter in Israel — with the cheapest Canadian flower on the shelf and a dumping probe circling
Cannabis Magazine cross-reads Cronos Group's Q2 2026 results against Cannabiz shelf data and finds the Canadian producer took about $15 million in Israeli revenue — up roughly 60% year on year, some 28% of group turnover and its tenth consecutive record quarter here — in a patient market that has been flat near 130,000–135,000 for two years, while its LIT brand sells at roughly ₪95–114 per 10g, the cheapest Canadian flower in the country; the trade-levies commissioner alleges a dumping margin near 125%, chairman and CEO Mike Gorenstein rejects the calculation as comparing retail popcorn in Canada to bulk corn kernels shipped to Israel, and the Economy Ministry says its advisory committee heard and dismissed that methodology in the previous round, with responses to the commissioner's questionnaires due 7 September.
- i24NEWS (Hebrew)Regulation & Policy
Police destroy 25 hidden cannabis greenhouses in a Negev sweep — and say hundreds of tonnes are grown out in the desert
A joint Border Police, IDF and Southern District operation across the Negev firing zones located and destroyed 25 concealed greenhouses, 12,200 cannabis seedlings and 11kg of dried material in a single day, with police estimating that greenhouses hidden across the desert grow hundreds of tonnes of illegal marijuana and a Border Police commander framing every seizure as less money reaching terror groups.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Business & Markets
Germany moves against 'GMP washing', threatening the Portugal gateway Israeli-linked cannabis firms helped build
Germany's Hesse state health authority ruled in June that post-harvest drying and trimming are critical GMP production steps, undercutting the near-decade-old route in which cannabis grown to agricultural standard in Canada, Colombia, Thailand or Uruguay was processed and batch-released at EU-GMP plants in Portugal before reaching German pharmacies — a gateway the magazine reports was served by Israeli-linked firms including MediCane's Portuguese subsidiary MHI Cultivo Medicinal and Yonatan Goldman's SLG Pharma, whose Portuguese licence dropped off the regulator's active list in April.
- Business of CannabisRegulation & Policy
Israel reopens the Canadian dumping case with a route around its finance minister
Trade Levies Commissioner Dani Tal, who has driven the case since January 2024, notified Ottawa on 2 August and reopened the anti-dumping investigation publicly on 5 August — and this time can reach for a 'provisional duty', a bond he may impose on his own authority once 60 days have passed, bypassing the advisory committee, the economy and finance ministers and the Knesset committee that stalled the recommended 165% levy when Bezalel Smotrich blocked it in April 2025; a preliminary decision is due 60 to 90 days after 5 August, landing inside the window of Israel's general election.