Meet the ‘Father of Marijuana Research’
Meet the ‘Father of Marijuana Research’
Raphael Mechoulam started his first marijuana project by walking into a police station and asking for some confiscated weed—for research purposes.
“I went there, drank coffee with the policemen and got 5 kilos of cannabis, hashish,” he said.
Decades later, the 87-year-old Israeli chemist is known widely as the “father of marijuana research,” after he used those 5 kilos to discover THC (marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient) in the 1960s, and then later discovered the structure of CBD (its non-psychoactive ingredient, often used for medicinal purposes). Over the years, the U.S.'s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has funded much of his extensive research, including examining the effects of marijuana on epilepsy, nausea, anxiety and schizophrenia. (Newsweek, 08.12.2017)
http://www.newsweek.com/meet-father-marijuana-research-742678