Israeli pot dealers boost business with high tech smokescreen

Growing popularity of encrypted Telegrass platform comes after Knesset approved blueprint for marijuana decriminalization
The Times of Israel (Israel)
Saturday, December 23, 2017

Telegrass, an Israeli platform for drug-dealing, has won praise from its users but sparked alarm among drug counselors and police. Amos Dov Silver, a 33-year-old Israeli, founded it in March as a channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram. A dual Israel-US citizen, he now lives in the United States “for fear that he’ll be arrested” in Israel, according to the Haaretz daily. Telegrass lets sellers list their wares and prices, exchanging self-deleting messages with buyers to set up deliveries. “We don’t know exactly how many people are using the platform, however we have over 100,000 registered users,” Silver told AFP in an online chat. “We will have better statistics in the future.”