With its moat, wall, barbed wire, armed guards and security cameras, the facility could be mistaken for a military base if it weren’t for the pungent odor of marijuana in the air.

Here, on the outskirts of a quiet village in northern Israel, 50,000 plants of 230 varieties grow at the country’s second-largest medical cannabis plantation.

“For cannabis, we are in the promised land with a good climate, 300 days of sunshine each year and perfect levels of humidity,” said Tamir Gedo, head of BOL Pharma, a company authorized by the Health Ministry to grow and distribute medical cannabis.

The recreational use of cannabis is illegal in the Jewish state, but for the past 10 years its therapeutic use has not only been permitted but also encouraged.

For a conference on marijuana, the Cannatech convention was remarkably free of reggae and thick smoke. If the three-day event held in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem March 7-9 featured fantasies, they were about financing and economic opportunities for the medical cannabis industry. And yeah, that whiff arose two or three times.

TEL AVIV (JTA) – He was chilling out in the corner, tipped back in his chair, newsboy cap askew on his head, a grin on his face and smoke gently wafting from his mouth.

Finally, I thought, I’ve found someone smoking pot at a cannabis conference.

CannaTech, an international conference held for the first time last week at venues in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, featured seminars on everything from the global cannabis investment market to quality control in commercial cannabis cultivation. There were vendors showcasing the latest growing technologies and unique handmade smoking devices. One guy was even touting a product to alleviate the dry-mouth feeling stoners are all too familiar with.

“As much as we love cannabis, this is a non-consumption event.”

That admonition kicked off the first day of presentations and roundtables at Cannatech, a three-day conference on the marijuana industry held this past week in Israel. Instead of pot edibles, hundreds of attendees munched on pita sandwiches and Turkish bourekas.

And, save for occasional patches of pungent air, the request to keep the event sober mostly worked.

Israel's fast-growing cannabis industry has high hopes for a new market -- exports of medical marijuana to America.

The country is already a leading supplier of pharmaceuticals to the U.S. Now its government, scientists and companies are working together to turn the once illicit drug into a booming new medical business.

With conservative Rabbis giving the okay for medical marijuana use, and the government adopting a relaxed stance, investment in cannabis production has exploded.

The industry is being pushed by Israel's Ministry of Health, which is trying to take the morality out of weed.

The Startup Nation’s Tel Aviv hub opened its doors on Monday to Israel’s first ever international conference on innovation in the medical cannabis industry.

Founded just last year, CannaTech’s conference brings together experts and entrepreneurs from across the field, including growers, researchers, investors, and others that have been drawn to this rapidly expanding field.

Second annual CannaTech conference brings hundreds of delegates from 15 countries to see what Israeli ‘cannapreneurs’ can offer them.

Marijuana conferences are popping up on a near weekly basis in the United States. Entrepreneurs, scientists and investors have to weed out the recreational gatherings from the more important industry confabs.

But there was no doubt that the CannaTech 2016 International Summit on Cannabis Innovation this week in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was an essential event.

Investors, researchers and high-tech experts gather for Israel’s first International Summit for Accelerating Cannabis Innovation.

Israel’s first International Summit for Accelerating Cannabis Innovation gets underway today in Tel Aviv, as investors, researchers and high-tech entrepreneurs from around the world gather to discuss the potential of cannabis in the fields of medicine, science and agriculture.

The summit is part of CannaTech 2016.

Canna Tech was founded last year to provide a platform to enable the identification and incubation of world-class innovative solutions for the cannabis industry.

Marijuana appears set for a critical year. We've already witnessed nearly two-dozen states approve marijuana for medicinal use since 1996 (the year in which California became the first state to legalize the use of cannabis for certain ailments), and residents in four states have voted to legalize recreational marijuana since 2012. Now, come November, we could see around a dozen more state-level marijuana initiatives and referendums on ballots.

The authorities have insisted they do not want to attract marijuana tourists, a subject for which the country has gained international fame in recent years.

The growing interest of international companies to settle in Uruguay to produce and export marijuana for medical use could lead to create a "small development center," said an official.

"Several international companies have shown interest in settling in Uruguay to produce and export medical marijuana," the secretary general of the National Drug Board, Milton Romani said in an interview with AFP.

"This is not what he had intended and can mean a small center of development for the country," he added.