Exodus 30:23
Where the name comes from
Kannabosem is not a brand somebody invented in a room. It is a phrase from the Torah, and the fight over what it means is the whole platform in two words.
וּקְנֵה־בֹ֖שֶׂם חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים וּמָאתָֽיִם
…and two hundred and fifty of aromatic cane.
Exodus 30:23 — the recipe for the holy anointing oil
What is actually being argued
קְנֵה בֹשֶׂם — kaneh bosem — is one of four ingredients God specifies for the oil that consecrates the Tabernacle, the vessels and the priests. Translators have rendered it as sweet cane, aromatic cane, calamus. Others have argued, for a century now, that it is cannabis. We are not going to pretend that argument is settled, because it is not. What we will say is this: the plant sits in the middle of the holiest recipe in the book, the question has never been closed, and a country that treats the plant as contraband while reading that verse every year owes itself a better answer than silence.
And the English
Say it out loud. Kannabosem. Can I chill. The pun is deliberate and we are not embarrassed by it — a party that wants a country to breathe out should be able to make a joke. The Hebrew is three thousand years old. The English is the question everyone here is actually asking.
Read the source yourself
The full argument, with every text it leans on, is a public source sheet on Sefaria.