When Will Israel Enter The Global Cannabis Industry?
The global markets are opening up for the overall cannabis industry. Despite all of the bumps and setbacks, when will the Israeli cannabis market finally make its global debut?
Right now the question is largely a matter of not just “regulations” but also politics. Donald Trump delayed the entrance of Israel into the global market in a deal with President Benjamin Netanyahu in exchange for moving the nation’s capital to Jerusalem.
In fact, that entrance seems to have been deliberately slowed until the pending European-US pharmaceutical trade deal went into full force this July.
Now, with no more capital swaps on offer, and the U.S. entrenched first in the global trade pathways for medical cannabis at least that are opening up (certainly on the CBD side of the equation), Israel seems next up to the plate.
It is not as if Israelis in the biz do not know this. With external cultivation, production, tech development, and even stock deals on offer now in places like Canada, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the U.S., Israelis are already in the global market.
This despite those in Israel still being bound by a frustrating denial of market entry for what seems, at this point, to be a final stutter as no more excuses can be found.
Why Is Israel Significant?
No matter the leaps and bounds made in cannabinoid research over the last decade just about everywhere reform has hit, as well as widening recognition of medical efficacy, Israel remains where “it is at,” on the medical cannabis front.
The country’s medical research program is decades old. Wider rollout and impact on society is also more established. Israelis these days can go to their regular doctor and a fairly accessible pharmacy system to obtain a drug that costs them $100 a month.
Nobody else on the planet has achieved such an overall equitable medical path to access.
There are other places that Israelis are going to show up (if they have not already) in a cannabis market near you. Namely, the impact of cleantech (growing with little water or energy use) is coming, if it has not already.
The largest legal recreational markets on the planet right now are all deserts and Europe is not shy about its assertion that global warming, indeed, exists.
In Germany, in fact, a new Israeli medtech development deal has just been signed with the country’s largest research hospital (Charite in Berlin).
While the Israelis have yet to move actual product, they will be soon. And as far as their global impact on the industry currently? It is already here.