A SMOKABLE WEED CREATES A BUZZ IN ISRAEL

JERUSALEM - Uri Falcha was strolling down Venice Beach in Southern
California one day three years ago. And he hit upon an idea. Falcha saw
street vendors peddling organically grown weeds that looked like marijuana,
that smelled like marijuana and, supposedly, that gave the high of
marijuana, but without the cannabis.

His first attempt at bringing some of the stuff home to Israel landed him in
jail at the Tel Aviv airport.

Today, after doing battle with the legal establishment, Falcha is peddling
his own version of a smokable weed called Buzz.

Buzz has become all the rage among Israelis in search of a legal high and
willing to experiment. When he launched the product over the summer, Falcha
figured he would introduce a month's supply in Tel Aviv kiosks and see what
happened. The month's supply - 20,000 packets weighing one-fifth of an ounce
each and costing about $10 - sold out in three days.

That is not surprising in a country where a political party called Green
Leaf, dedicated to the decriminalization of marijuana, almost won enough
votes in May to take a seat in parliament.

''We came with a legal product to a huge market that has no legal product,''
said Falcha, 41. ''The rule we broke is it's the first time you can smoke
something, get high, and still be legal.'' In fact, that was Falcha's main
hurdle in marketing Buzz - to prove it was legit. He sent a sample to the
police laboratory, which analyzed the substance and said it contained no
illicit drugs.

Cool, thought Falcha. He even used the police certificate in his ads.
Uncool, said the police, who wanted no part of his marketing scheme. They
had certified the sample, but they weren't endorsing the product. After some
angry phone calls and letters, Falcha dropped use of the police seal,
although every Buzz package does contain the news that the police have
judged the product legal.

''You smoke it only when you want to have a good time and feel relaxed,''
said Falcha, a former grocer with long black hair who favors bolo ties and
leather boots.

What does Buzz contain? Catnip, wild lettuce opium, and passion flower,
among other ingredients, but no nicotine, Falcha said. Herb expert Varro E.
Tyler describes wild lettuce opium as a ''venerable fraud''; similarly, he
said, catnip has no known psychedelic properties. The US Food and Drug
Administration has not included passion flower on the list of foods or
dietary supplements generally regarded as safe.

In Israel, Buzz comes in a little green package decorated with a large
cannabis leaf. The buzz on Buzz is that it is milder than pot but produces a
similar high for some smokers.

JERUSALEM - Uri Falcha gets Buzz, a smokable weed that he says produces a
legal high, from a Los Angeles company named Temple of Ecstacy Corp., which
has marketed a product known as Herbal Ecstacy. A dietary supplement, Herbal
Ecstacy ran into trouble with the Food and Drug Administration because it
contained ephedrine, an organic stimulant banned in two states. Herbal
Ecstacy was discontinued, and Buzz contains no ephedrine, company president
Benjamin Bright said.

Bright said that Buzz, under various names, is being sold in Japan and
Australia and is coming soon to the United States. But he said Falcha's
marketing of Buzz - ''as legal marijuana'' - won't work here.