Release Cannabis to the Public

Israel was rocked this week by a broadcasted Knesset meeting with distraught parents of children with serious diseases, lobbying for access to cannabis to help their children function. As a well-known proponent of medical cannabis, Moshe Feiglin was interviewed on Tuesday on cannabis on Radio Galei Yisrael. The following is a translation of his comments:

Does the State have to limit the type of beer that you drink? To absolutely prohibit smoking? To legislate what strains of coffee bean you consume? All of these substances are no less addictive than cannabis.

The difference between those substances and cannabis is that cannabis has wonderfous healing qualities. When the State limits cannabis, the ill are the first to pay the price.

The real story behind this is power. The State and the pharmaceutical companies have power and they do not want to relinquish it. The State does not want to relinquish its power to control the citizen and the pharmaceutical companies do not want to relinquish their financial power.

That is why – instead of completely releasing the market in a responsible and gradual way – the State is attempting to implement all sorts of intermediate solutions for the ill. Most of these ‘solutions’ make matters worse.

I do not use cannabis and do not recommend it to anyone who does not need it. But the State has no right to prohibit its citizens from using this plant. It has no right to indirectly bring suffering upon the ill and damage to Israel’s economy.

The use of cannabis must be authorized in a gradual and responsible manner until we have a different consumption culture, similar to alcohol. It should be available only in pharmacies, from the age of 21 and in logical amounts.

Zehut is committed to the legalization of cannabis.