Tue 25 June 2019:
A video has circulated on social media of a cannabis plant growing in the garden of a mosque in the Lebanese capital Beirut, local news website Bintjbeil reports. The footage shows the psychoactive plant flourishing outside the mosque in the Ras Al-Naba district. The Imam of the mosque said in the report that he thought the plant had sprouted after birds dropped cannabis seeds in the garden.
Cannabis has long been cultivated illegally in Lebanon, particularly in the Bekaa Valley, historically a stronghold for Hizballah and other outlaw groups. The quasi-lawless area – one of the poorest in Lebanon – is notorious for its production of narcotics, which expanded massively over recent decades, turning into a multi-million-dollar industry. Lebanon is the world’s fourth largest producer of cannabis, according to a 2017 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, after Morocco, Mexico, and Paraguay. Last year, the country’s parliament speaker said the country could soon legalise medicinal marijuana to jumpstart a struggling economy.
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