Our Last Email Went Unanswered: Goodbye, Mentor Raphael Mechoulam
Art by Rebekah Jenks
"Raphael Mechoulam just emailed and called us." I'll never forget the warm, sunny day in Santa Barbara in August of 2018, or the excitement that came across the face of the founder of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine when I told him the news. Little did I realize the depths of the discoveries of the pioneer who reached out to thank us for the newsletter I had written for the Academy.
Working for Dr. David Bearman, who founded the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine, was a humbling pleasure throughout that year. It was communications like the one on that day that held a special place in my heart. With excitement, Dr. Bearman replied, 'What, are you kidding me?" I showed him the email from across the oceans, and he jumped up from behind his chair, "Yes, Yes, Yesss!!" The 80-year-old legendary founder of the Haight-Ashbury drug treatment clinic in 1969 extorted with such happiness.
The weight of that communication from Israel didn't set in until after I founded the Global Cannabinoid Research Center at the end of that same year, 2018. Throughout the following years, more than once, I found myself on websites as a Keynote Speaker alongside Raphael Mechoulam at International Symposiums of Medicine. Then, in November 2021, we were together on the organizational committee for TOXI2021, The World Toxicology Conference, in which Professor Tom Blundell of the University of Cambridge, U.K., was the Chair.
Shortly after this event, I decided that the Global Cannabinoid Research Center should have a closer relationship with Tel Aviv and Professor Raphael Mechoulam himself. After all, I'd taken his calls and appeared with him - so why not reach out, hoping that this iconic godfather of cannabis science would interact with me? I admit it took some time and the right opening for a Q&A to start between the two of us, one which I will treasure forever.
Being approached for collaborations and talks that lead to research in our industry is a norm for many of us, as so many make plans that need to follow through. I had a possible joint venture that looked good, but there was a catch; The entity created and emulsified converted cannabinoids - specifically HHC, Delta 8, and Delta 9 from Hemp.
So, I took it upon myself to email that man with a plan back in the 60s that has made our plant legitimate, as I wanted to know what he thought of these CBD conversions into THC analogs. Admittingly, sending the first email involved a lot of nerves and more than a tad of wonder if he'd even look at my email, let alone respond.
The next day there was a surprise in my inbox, a letter from the legend. As a preamble, I got an exceptional cup of coffee before opening it up to read. This man, who had so many patents and creations, willingly responded to my inquiry about how these cannabinoids were made, by who, and if they were ever found safe for human consumption. Right off the bat, a distaste for acetates (THC-0), much like we've seen in the US recently, was made clear by the staunchly worded professor.
"They were created in an investigation, for research, made in discoveries in the late 60s here, in our labs." Prof. Raphael Mechoulam stated in the November 2022 email.
Over the following weeks and months, the talks continued with citations to publications I had never found before by any search I'd ever done. I started realizing I was gaining information that few, if any, in my world of cannabinoid medicine had. In nearly 40 emails back and forth, the legend continued to share information about how these cannabinoids created from CBD came to the scene - and why. I quickly gave him a nickname in my little office, "Ye of little words," due to the short but concise responses at first.
Then I started getting paragraphs. Information started pouring into the GCRC on the creation of so many different analogs, purification processes, and the comparison of Tel Aviv Cannabis availability to that of the US became the forefront of many talks.
I'm known for going on and on with email and communications. Professor Raphael Mechoulam never referenced long emails, and he didn't bat an eye at my wordiness or repetitive ways that came about after a head injury in 1995. Instead, he answered them gracefully, with kindness and knowledge on cannabinoids. Words coming directly from him, the man that isolated or created them himself.
At some point, I'll share that information. Today, as we all look back on the life of a legend that just left us on March 9th, 2023 at age 92, we celebrate the discoveries, the knowledge we all have, and the future of Cannabis as Medicine in the form of a plant and beyond - with a lot of the credit for the legitimization of our industry falling on the lap of a single man and the teams he created for research.
As I type this, knowing Professor Mechoulam has passed the baton to us researchers instills even more inspiration within me. Instead of feeling sadness at the loss of a great person living to the ripe age of 92, I'm celebrating what he gave to all of us and me personally. Hope is a powerful tool nobody can beat when the right person wields it, and the professor utilized it like an Olympian with more gold medals than anyone ever to walk the earth.
As we huddle together, missing the key that opened the doors in the world of Cannabis Science, we mourn but simultaneously relish in the achievements of the great man.
Doctor Mechoulam was the first person to synthesize THC. He was born in Bulgaria in 1930 to a Sephardic Jewish family that relocated to Israel, where Mechoulam studied chemistry. In the early 60s, as a chemist at the Weizmann Institute, he acquired some cannabis from the Israeli police to isolate and identify the plant's psychoactive component.
"Morphine had been isolated from opium in the nineteenth century, early nineteenth century," Mechoulam told CNN in an interview in 2014. "Cocaine had been isolated from coca leaves [in the] mid-nineteenth century. And here we were, mid-twentieth century, and yet the chemistry of cannabis was not known. So it looked like [an] interesting project."
He succeeded and discovered tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
He didn't stop there. His team went on to isolate, elucidate, and synthesize several more cannabinoids, including our favorites cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerol (CBG), and cannabichromene (CBC).
These discoveries laid the foundation of cannabis research and helped prompt future discoveries of endocannabinoids and receptors. In 1992, Professor Raphael Mechoulam led a study that provided evidence that a chemical called arachidonoyl ethanolamine, which he and his colleagues named anandamide, was produced by the body and could activate the already identified CB1 receptor in the brain.
Mechoulam kept going with continuous innovations into his later years.
At CannMed in California in 2019, at 88 years old, he announced yet another cannabinoid creation of his - a synthetically stable cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), fit for clinical use.
"We have taken the unstable acid molecules of the cannabis plant and synthesized them to provide a stable, consistent basis for researching new therapies across a wide range of medical needs," Mechoulam said in the conference presentation.
In the same talk, he urged the scientific community to support more medical cannabis research aimed at cannabis-based treatments for conditions like what plague Genevieve and me personally - Severe Epilepsy. He spoke about the amount of lost time by failing to get research done steadfastly as he once did.
"Did we have to wait 30 years? No," he said in 2019. "We could have helped thousands of children, and we didn't."
Mechoulam was a professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He received the Israel Prize in Exact Sciences – Chemistry in 2000, a NIDA Discovery Award in 2011, and the Harvey Prize (an annual Israeli award for breakthroughs in science and technology) in 2019.
But, in our home, he wins the prize as the most compassionate researcher to ever exist on Planet Earth. He cared about what hurts us, what we fight against, and what scares us far more than the Cancer I currently have - Epileptic Seizures.
Forever we have a debt to repay, and the only way we can do this is to keep studying and learning about a plant that's often minimized, marginalized, and pushed aside in a way that has jeopardized the future of humanity.
Rest in peace, Raphael Mechoulam. The world loved you and will forever miss your presence.
