Hagit Yagoda is the founder of Canna Yagoda and a pioneering grassroots advocate in Israel’s medical cannabis movement. As a cancer patient and one of the country's very first legal medical cannabis patients, she has spent over 30 years fighting intense social stigma and systemic bureaucracy. Refusing to accept prohibition, Hagit led protests, confronted government ministers, and united patients to force the regulatory changes that helped establish the Israeli medical cannabis industry.
Beyond her public advocacy, Hagit possesses deep expertise in hands-on cannabis formulation. Operating without a traditional medical background, she built an "underdog lab" where she spent decades mastering the science of extractions, topical treatments, and strain-matching for severe illnesses. By validating her grassroots formulations with lab testing and documented patient success, she bridged the gap between patient intuition and scientific credibility long before a regulated market existed.
Today, Hagit is an international speaker dedicated to ensuring the industry prioritizes plant-based healing over pure profit. Her professional focus lies in translating raw patient struggles into actionable industry innovation, breaking down the barriers between medical necessity and daily lifestyle, and reminding global markets of the human element at the core of the cannabis revolution.
Friday 6 Nov · 18:00–19:00
60 min
On now
Finished
Still Alive: Forty Years of Cancer, Cannabis and Change
At 17, Hagit Yagoda was diagnosed with stage IV Hodgkin’s lymphoma and told she would probably die. The cancer returned twice more, and each time she relied on the one thing that had helped her through chemotherapy: cannabis. Determined to understand why, she studied the plant and its extracts, and became a certified cannabis chemist.
In 2013 she went on a hunger strike outside the home of Israel’s Minister of Health. It grew into a movement, and within two months thousands of patients received their first legal cannabis license. Today close to 150,000 people in Israel can receive a prescription, and Hagit treats patients of every age, from small children to a 96-year-old.
This talk is not a promotion of cannabis for its own sake, and not a campaign against doctors. It is an invitation to see that there is more than one way to treat an illness. Attendees will leave with a first-hand account of how regulation changed in one of the toughest countries to change it, and a new view of cannabis as medicine for healing, not only for pain relief.
