Vice: regulating Lebanon’s darker side

It is time to have a serious debate about the thriving industries of prostitution, gambling, weapons and drugs in Lebanon — that is the opinion of Lebanon’s straight talking Minister of Tourism, Fadi Abboud. In an interview with Executive in April the minister assailed the poor regulation, outdated laws and hypocritical divergence between policy and practice relating to these economies of vice. What is more, Abboud has his eye on the bottom line, smells a fast buck and wants the government to have a piece, or at least a bigger piece, of the action. In this report Executive investigates the murkier corners of Lebanon’s economy from the hashish fields of the northern Bekaa valley to the strip clubs on the Jounieh highway to find out who is cashing in, who is covering whose back and who would be the winners and the losers in a shake up of the status