In years past, there have been proposals floated in Lebanon for cannabis legalization. But this time, the country\u2019s legalization initiative is being crafted by a prestigious New York consulting firm and has won global media attention. The time could finally be right for the Middle Eastern nation to legalize cannabis and export hash on the international market.<\/p>\n
In a July 6 interview with\u00a0Bloomberg News<\/a>, Lebanon\u2019s acting minister for economy and trade, Raed Khoury, outlined the proposal developed by Manhattan-based consulting firm\u00a0McKinsey & Company<\/a>. The idea comes as part of a wider plan to address the country\u2019s worsening fiscal crisis with a crash diversification of the economy.<\/p>\n Khoury plugged what he called likely \u201cquick wins.\u201d These included boosting tourism, new crops such as avocados, a \u201cconstruction zone\u201d from which rebuilding efforts for war-ravaged Syria could be staged \u2014 and legalizing the already deeply entrenched cannabis sector. He predicted that exporting hash onto the world\u2019s medical marijuana market would be especially productive.<\/p>\n \u201cThe quality we have is one of the best in the world,\u201d Khoury boasted to Bloomberg of his country\u2019s fabled herb, adding that cannabis holds the potential to become a billion-dollar industry.<\/p>\n Khoury said implementing the basics of the 1,000-page report will be critical if debt-burdened Lebanon expects the international community to start releasing $11 billion in grants and loans, as they\u00a0pledged earlier this year<\/a>. In other words, this time cannabis legalization is being presented in conservative, pro-business terms of fiscal responsibility.<\/p>\n A summary of the document has been presented to President Michel Aoun, and the full version is awaiting ratification by the new cabinet. Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is still struggling to form that cabinet following May\u2019s elections, which left the government divided. The Shi\u2019ite party Hezbollah gained more parliamentary seats, leaving the Sunni and Christian communities scrambling for greater representation.<\/p>\n In addition to being a political party, of course, Hezbollah is also among the various militias that control hashish fiefdoms in the eastern Bekaa Valley, the fertile cannabis heartland along the Syrian border. During the 2006 Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israeli cannabis enthusiasts actually\u00a0organized a boycott of Lebanese hash<\/a>\u00a0in an effort to undermine Hezbollah.<\/p>\n But in fact, the Bekaa Valley has long been a patchwork, with several contending militias each controlling hashish operations. Bekka cannabis was the green gold that fueled vying factions in Lebanon\u2019s civil war of the 1980s, a complicated struggle involving Shi\u2019ite militias like Hezbollah as well as Sunni and Christian paramilitaries. Since then, the hashish producers have remained armed to fend off government eradication efforts.<\/p>\n Cannabis eradication efforts in the Bekaa\u00a0Valley began in the \u201990s after the civil war ended. At that time, the valley was occupied by Syria, which seized it in 1976, a year after the war broke out, but Syrian and Lebanese troops collaborated in eradication campaigns. As a reward for these campaigns, in 1997 both Lebanon and Syria were\u00a0removed from the U.S. \u201cblacklist\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of drug-producing countries deemed lax in narcotics enforcement.\u00a0But the growers always replanted, and the hashish clans recouped their losses. Syria finally\u00a0withdrew from the Bekaa<\/a>\u00a0in 2006.<\/p>\n Observing this cycle of eradication and recovery, one of Lebanon\u2019s most influential politicians three years ago unveiled the first significant proposal for legalization. This was Walid Jumblatt, longtime patriarch of the Druze community, who led a powerful militia force during the civil war, and later emerged as Lebanon\u2019s \u201cking-maker.\u201d Able to mobilize the considerable Druze vote, he was seen as the man who could make or break Lebanon\u2019s always contentious governments. By 2014, neighboring Syria was descending into its own civil war, and there was fear of this re-igniting still-volatile Lebanon. Prosperity and (especially) winning the goodwill of the Bekaa hashish producers were suddenly a priority. In this context, Jumblatt announced his support for legalization.<\/p>\n Jumblatt\u00a0told a local TV reporter<\/a>\u00a0in December 2014: \u201cNever in my life have I smoked marijuana, but I support growing cannabis<\/a> for medical use and to improve the living conditions of farmers in north Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Let\u2019s legalize cannabis and regulate its cultivation.\u201d<\/p>\n He also proclaimed (in Arabic) on his\u00a0Twitter account<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s time to allow hashish to be grown and to overturn arrest warrants against people sought for doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n At about this same time in 2014, the ultra-brutal self-proclaimed \u201cIslamic State,\u201d or ISIS, which had seized much territory in Syria, began making incursions across the border into Lebanon,\u00a0attempting to seize villages<\/a>\u00a0in the Bekaa Valley. In addition to its horrific human rights abuses, ISIS was aggressively\u00a0putting cannabis fields to the torch<\/a>\u00a0throughout its areas of control in Syria as part of its puritanical dogma, leaving farms devastated. This was seen as a clear threat in the Bekaa.<\/p>\n The valley\u2019s cannabis farmers, who had armed to resist Lebanese and Syrian eradication efforts, now started forming militias to beat back any attempt by ISIS to invade the Bekaa. In January 2015,\u00a0Public Radio International<\/a>\u00a0visited a hashish production compound in the Bekaa, where the workers showed off their weaponry and boasted of the anti-ISIS patrols they were organizing. \u201cThis is for ISIS,\u201d said one worker, showing off his two-foot machete.<\/p>\n So now, Lebanon\u2019s military and security forces are effectively allied with the hashish lords and cannabis farmers they once opposed \u2014 even if it is inconvenient for either side to admit it.<\/p>\n ISIS has now been effectively broken as a serious ground force in Syria. But the Bekaa\u2019s popular mobilization in response to the threat back in 2015 won the cannabis growers new respect in Lebanon \u2014 again, even if it remains controversial to say it out loud.<\/p>\n According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2017 annual\u00a0World Drug Report<\/a>, Lebanon \u2014 despite its small territory \u2014 is the world\u2019s fourth-largest cannabis producer.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think Lebanon should legalize cannabis and export hash?<\/p>\n The post Lebanon Considers Legalizing Hash After Cannabis Growers Help Fight Back ISIS<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In years past, there have been proposals floated in Lebanon for cannabis legalization. But this time, the country\u2019s legalization initiative is being crafted by a prestigious New York consulting firm and has won global media attention. The time could finally be right for the Middle Eastern nation to legalize cannabisContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,918,1831,4944,4945,139,4946,81,4947],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27840,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27839\/revisions\/27840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lebanon\u2019s \u2018King-Maker\u2019 Supports Legal Cannabis<\/h4>\n
Lebanese Cannabis Growers Arm Against ISIS<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Lebanon Considers Legalizing Hash After Cannabis Growers Help Fight Back ISIS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"