The Documentary about How a Nobel Prize Nominated Discovered Cannabis’s THC in 1964

In 1964, after a trip undertaken to the Weizmann Institute in Israel, researcher Raphael Mechoulam discovered THC, marijuana´s psychoactive component. Twenty years later he would discover that this product affects the endocannabinoid system, the human body's greatest receptor, going on to find that the brain produces a very similar substance, anandamide, one of the main substances producing happiness. 

Now the documentary The Scientist explains how the discovery of this component in grass came about, and features the story, from his childhood, of the man who was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in this field. The film covers his experience during the Holocaust in Bulgaria, his emigration to Israel, and includes details on his career as a student of the chemistry and biology of cannabis. 

“Mechoulam was never disparaged as not being a great scientist. The world, however, has been slow to appreciate his findings, and this is due to the demonization of cannabis since the beginning of the ‘war on drugs,’” notes the project's writer, producer and editor, Zach Klein, who pointed out that Darwin, after coming up with his ideas on evolution, kept them in a drawer for 20 years because he feared the Church's reprisals. 

Klein met the Bulgarian when he was looking for a way that the plant might allay the effects of chemotherapy on his mother, who was fighting breast cancer. After that meeting he released an initial audio-visual work, Prescribed Grass, which was broadcast on Israeli television in 2009 and spurred the country's medical authorities to initiate a medical program that stands as an international model today. In addition to serving as an example for the scientific community, Mechoulam has managed to make known the plant's real and positive results, which had been concealed by other scientists for many years.