Cannabis prospers in Beqaa amidst calls for legalisation

Al Diyar newspaper spotlighted today the vast plains cultivated with cannabis in East and West Baalbaq up to the North Beqaa and the remote areas of Jrud Hermel, as well as, on the sidewalks to the highway and the entrances to the villages and towns in the area. The visitor to the region, Al Diyar wrote, can clearly see cannabis growers racing to pick the harvest before the rain, knowing that the produce needs to be completely dry ahead of processing in the months of December and January. The cannabis crop has invaded the grasslands of Baalbaq-Hermel not because “we are outlaws but because of the collapse of the seasons”, said the mayor of Majdalyoun, president of the Syndicate of Potato Farmers in the Province of Baalbaq-Hermel, Talal Kheiriddine. Farmers chose to grow weed for several reasons, Kheiriddine stated. First, due to its low-cost production that barely needs any capital, and second, to compensate for the losses of the potato and apple season slump, the fact that drove farmers to uproot their trees and replace them with cannabis, Kheiriddine explained. To know more on the subject, Al Diyar spoke to a number of farmers. Wael Omar, for example, made obvious that all those plains of cannabis are a result of the State’s negligence and lack of interest in legalizing the cultivation of the plant which, as he said, raises its prices. Ali Arrar, for his part, said that rural inhabitants tend to grow hashish to alleviate the chronic poverty brought upon them by the lax attitude of the government towards the people of the area. The absence of a proper agricultural policy has driven farmers to grow weed, he added. Similarly, Mohamad Hazimeh, said that the government is not treating the subject seriously, pointing to the alternative agriculture project adopted since 1992, which he dismissed as a “joke”. (Al Diyar, October 17, 2017)

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