Lebanon to consider legalising cannabis growing
BEIRUT - Lebanon's parliament is considering legalising the cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said on Wednesday, in an attempt to boost the struggling economy.
"The Lebanese Parliament is preparing to study and adopt the legislation necessary to legislate the cultivation of cannabis and its manufacture for medical uses in the manner of many European countries and some US states," Berri's office said, reporting comments made in a meeting with the US ambassador to Beirut.
Although growing the plant is illegal in Lebanon, powerful landowners nevertheless have for decades openly grown fields of cannabis in the fertile Bekaa Valley, untouched by law enforcement and its attempts to crack down.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ranked Lebanon in a 2018 report as the world's third main source of cannabis resin seized by national authorities after Morocco and Afghanistan.
