Milk, Honey, and Sweet Mary Jane
Cannabis in the Holy Land is a booming business. Israel Story takes a deep dive into the world of Telegrass, the Israeli app that made buying weed as easy as ordering a pizza.
According to a recent study conducted by the Israeli Anti-Drug Authority, the Holy Land might as well be rebranded as a “Weedtopia.” More than a quarter of adults aged 18 to 40 reported having used marijuana within the last 30 days. This statistic, says the Authority’s chief scientist, professor Yossi Harel-Fisch, places Israel among the countries with the highest rate of pot smokers in the world. In this episode, Israel Story’s Yochai Maital meets up—in Poughkeepsie, New York, of all places—with the man who is most committed to making that number even higher. Meet Amos Silver, a long-haired hippie who grew up in an ultra-Orthodox home in Tzfat and has become the unlikely mastermind behind Telegrass, a blossoming weed-commerce application that has more than 100,000 Israeli users.
The original music in this episode was composed and performed by Ari Wenig, with help from Yochai Maital and Ruth Danon. Additional music by Boom Pam, Meir Ariel, Michael Swissa, and Michael Greilsammer. The episode was edited by Shai Satran with help from Julie Subrin.
Listen to the full episode here, or download it from iTunes. You can hear all of Israel Story’s episodes in English here and in Hebrew here.
Israel Story, the English-language version of the popular Israeli radio program Sipur Israeli, is distributed by PRX and produced in partnership with Tablet.
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