Israel cannabis news
Patients & Medical
Prescriptions, licences, pharmacy access, cost and physician practice for Israel's medical cannabis patients.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Open dashboards exposed 13,219 phone numbers scraped from Israeli medical-cannabis WhatsApp groups
Two password-free web interfaces on domains tied to Seach Medical Group's founder-CTO held member lists and message content harvested from about 160 patient, pharmacy and competitor WhatsApp groups; the company says the issue was checked and handled immediately.
- Israel Hayom (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Two brothers aged 3 and 5 treated in intensive care in Jerusalem after eating cannabis sweets
The boys were rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center this week disoriented, confused and unsteady on their feet, and staff established that each had eaten two sweets labelled at 20mg THC and 10mg CBD apiece; senior paediatric emergency physician Dr Amir Fisher described the poisoning as severe — most acutely in the three-year-old, the lighter of the two — noted that no antidote exists and treatment is largely supportive, and said a few more sweets could have endangered their lives, while the brothers were monitored in paediatric intensive care and discharged in good condition after about a day.
- 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.
- 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.
- Ynet (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Cannabis hyperemesis diagnoses jump 16% in US emergency rooms — an Israeli specialist explains the paradox
Ynet's health desk reports a US CDC finding that emergency-room diagnoses of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome — severe nausea, repeated vomiting, abdominal pain and relief from hot showers, typically after years of daily use — rose 16% between October 2025 and May 2026, with the sharpest increase among 15-to-24-year-olds, and asks Dr. Nadav Ilani, a Clalit gastroenterologist, why a drug commonly used against nausea can eventually provoke it; he cautions the jump probably reflects a new dedicated diagnostic code rather than a genuine rise in incidence.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
A joint on the balcony, a smell next door: the dispute splitting cannabis patients, neighbors — and lawyers
A feature examines the legal gray zone facing Israeli medical-cannabis patients who smoke at home, where neighbors odor complaints increasingly reach the courts and pit patients, residents and lawyers against one another over the limits of the right to medicate.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Back on the rise: Israel's medical-cannabis patient count hits a record 143,900
Health Ministry figures for May 2026 put the number of licensed medical-cannabis patients in Israel at an all-time high of 143,900, resuming growth after a period of stagnation.
- Cannabis Magazine (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
'Go take your drugs': leaked recordings of IDF disabled veterans' chief disparaging PTSD patients' cannabis spark uproar
In recordings aired by Channel 13, IDF Disabled Veterans Organization chairman Idan Kleiman is heard dismissing combat-PTSD veterans' medical cannabis as 'drugs', prompting demands for his removal against the backdrop of a High Court petition over a tenfold gap in housing benefits between physically and psychologically wounded soldiers.
- Maariv (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
'I was licensed to prescribe medical cannabis — here's why I gave the license up'
A physician's first-person account of why he stopped prescribing, reflecting the professional unease behind Israel's tightening rules.
- Kan 11 (Hebrew)Patients & Medical
Demand for medical-cannabis prescriptions is climbing — and the Health Ministry is worried
A report says requests for medical-cannabis prescriptions are rising in Israel, prompting concern inside the Health Ministry about oversight and the program's direction.