An Israeli chemist isolates THC from hashish supplied by the police

The material behind one of cannabis science’s defining discoveries arrived at the laboratory on a public bus: five kilograms of seized Lebanese hashish supplied by the Israeli police.

An overlooked chemistry

Raphael Mechoulam began studying cannabis at the Weizmann Institute in the early 1960s. Morphine and cocaine had been isolated in the nineteenth century, but cannabis’s main psychoactive constituent had not been obtained in pure form and structurally explained.

Legal controls also discouraged research. In a 2007 interview, Mechoulam recalled that cannabis was difficult for scientists to obtain and that universities struggled with the required security arrangements.

Five kilograms from police

Mechoulam asked the institute’s administrative director whether he knew anyone at national police headquarters. A personal connection produced five kilograms—about eleven pounds—of confiscated Lebanese hashish. Mechoulam carried it from Tel Aviv to Rehovot by bus.

Only later did the researcher and police discover that they had skipped the lawful route. Drug-research licensing belonged to the Ministry of Health, not the police. Mechoulam apologised and subsequently received police hashish with ministry documents for decades.

Isolating THC

Working with Yehiel Gaoni and other colleagues, Mechoulam separated cannabis constituents and determined their structures. Their 1964 paper reported the isolation, structure and partial synthesis of the active constituent now called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. They completed a total synthesis in 1965.

The importance was not merely naming a molecule. A defined compound could be reproduced, measured and tested in ways that a variable plant extract could not. It gave later researchers a foundation for investigating how cannabis acts in the body.

Mechoulam’s group went on to synthesise THC in 1965 and continued mapping other cannabinoids. The episode links a makeshift first supply to a research programme that lasted for decades.

The compound was initially called delta-1-THC. A later change in chemical numbering produced the familiar name delta-9-THC; it was the same principal psychoactive molecule, not a second discovery.

Why the index did not move

This was a scientific discovery in Israel, not a reform of possession, cultivation or medical-access law. The unusual supply story illustrates how prohibition complicated early cannabinoid research, but the 1964 entry is contextual and moves no Cannabis Freedom Index score.^[1][2][3]