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Illegal Marijuana Trade Thrives in Lebanon

While the Lebanese government is preoccupied with domestic and regional conflicts, efforts to combat the country’s growing cannabis trade are put on the back burner.
A soldier and a policeman secure a field as a man uses a tractor to uproot hashish plants in Boday village, near Baalbek city, July 23, 2012. Farmers armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars forced Lebanese government troops to abandon an operation to destroy their illegal cannabis crop in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley on Monday, a witness said. The farmers' attack halted a morning raid by security forces, who had been flattening the tall spiky marijuana plants with tractors, accompanied by
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In Lebanon, the absence of the state is reflected in many ways, and cannabis cultivation is the most absurd and scandalous of them all. It is alarming, yet ridiculous. Each year, with the beginning of summer, the Lebanese state, without fail, demonstrates the inefficiency and corruption of its institutions. This summer is no exception. In the distant plains were the cannabis crops are thriving, a familiar farce is set to play out once more.

Cannabis has been a “prohibited crop” since the 1930s. With the establishment of the Lebanese state centered around the capital, Beirut, “remote and deprived areas” emerged independently. The regions of the northern Bekaa were designated as such for a number of reasons.

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