Efforts to legally monetize Lebanon’s cannabis

ENAR

If you ask the farmers of the Bekaa Valley, they will explain that cannabis cultivation in Lebanon predates the establishment of Lebanon’s republic by generations. Located some 30 kilometers east of the capital Beirut and nestled between the western Mount Lebanon range and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains to the east, the Bekaa Valley has for a long time been the heart of Lebanon’s drug country. Now, advice from an international consultancy, a statement by Parliament’s speaker that legalization is being studied, and plans by a local university to establish a medicinal cannabis research center all might kick-start a new branch of Lebanon’s pharmaceutical industry. High hopes There certainly are credible dreamers invested in the idea. At a university campus north of Beirut, Mohammad Mroueh has high hopes. A professor of chemistry and expert on medicinal plants, Mroueh plans to one day establish a medicinal cannabis research center and study the potential