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Lebanon’s parliament is set to vote on a law that would legalise the cultivation of cannabis for medical and industrial use in an effort to boost its crippled economy and curb illicit production of the psychoactive plant.

The draft law, which has been endorsed by parliamentary committees and is now headed for a final vote, would only affect cannabis that contains less than one percent of the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabidinol, or THC.

THC gives cannabis the recreational effects that have made it the most widely used illicit substance across the globe. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 147 million people, or 2.5 percent of the world population, consume cannabis.

Lebanon has cultivated the plant for at least 100 years and produces large amounts of hashish, a sticky, sweet-smelling derivative of the cannabis plant that looks like chocolate. Though illegal to produce, sell or use, it is widely available locally and is also illegally exported.

Lebanese hashish can be found in European capitals, and formerly made up about 80 percent of the world’s supply during the country’s civil war years (1975-90) when cultivation was at its peak.

Instead of dealing with that market, this bill would seek to create a new one involving types of cannabis plants that have not traditionally been cultivated in Lebanon.

Member of parliament Yassine Jaber, who headed the subcommittee that drafted the law, said the bill was based on a 2019 report by United States-based consultancy McKinsey & Company that recommended Lebanon legalise cannabis production for “high-added-value medicinal products with export focus”.

Shortly afterwards, then-economy minister Raed Khoury said a legal cannabis sector in Lebanon could generate $1bn in revenue per year because the quality of Lebanon’s hashish was “one of the best in the world”.

“We have a competitive and a comparative advantage in the cannabis business,” Jaber told Al Jazeera. “Our soil is among the best in the world for this, and the cost of production is low compared to other states.”

Regulating the market
Dozens of countries around the world have allowed research in and production of medical cannabis in recent years, with studies repeatedly demonstrating the therapeutic effects of cannabinoids, a major chemical constituent of cannabis, for treatment of nausea and vomiting in terminal illnesses such as cancer and AIDS.

The WHO says it has also shown therapeutic uses for “asthma and glaucoma, as an antidepressant, appetite stimulant, anticonvulsant and anti-spasmodic”.

Other countries and regions have gone further and entirely legalised cannabis, including Uruguay, Georgia, South Africa, 10 US states and, most recently, Canada.

The draft law creates a commission with a regulatory authority that would issue licences for everything from importing seeds and saplings, establishing cannabis plant nurseries, planting and harvesting the crop, manufacturing goods from it and exporting its derivatives.

Licences can be awarded to Lebanese pharmaceutical companies, industries permitted to create industrial fibers, oils and extracts, and foreign companies that have a licence to work in the cannabis industry from their country of origin.

Additionally, licences can be awarded to specialised agricultural co-operatives established in Lebanon, Lebanese citizens such as farmers or landowners, and labs and research centres qualified to work with controlled substances.

‘Opportunity missed’
One of the draft law’s stated goals is to reduce pressure on Lebanon’s clogged court and prison system stemming from organised crime involving the local cannabis trade.

But instead of decriminalising consumption of the plant or reducing sentences, it calls for “strengthening criminal penalties on violations against the articles of this law”.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 people are arrested for drug crimes each year in Lebanon, the vast majority for the consumption of hashish, according to statistics from the Central Drug Enforcement Office.

The bill would also explicitly prohibit anyone with a criminal record from acquiring a licence to cultivate or work with the cannabis crop in any manner.

It would thereby exclude tens of thousands of people who have served time or have outstanding drug warrants for cultivation and use of cannabis, mostly in the fertile eastern Bekaa Valley region, where most of the crop is grown and processed.

This means that many farmers who have grown cannabis for generations would not be allowed to take part in the new legal sector.

“This law would legalise cultivation without taking into consideration the situation of persons who consume drugs, or those who produce them,” Karim Nammour, a lawyer with progressive NGO Legal Agenda who specialises in drug policy, told Al Jazeera.

“Its an opportunity missed – they have failed to take a holistic approach.”

Sandy Mteirik, a drug policy development manager at Skoun, a Lebanese nongovernmental organisation focused on drug rehabilitation and advocacy, also criticised the move.

“For sure this is not what the farmers of the Bekaa want,” she told Al Jazeera. “There is no clear mechanism to integrate the existing illegal market into the legal market. You can’t just ignore the implications and consequences of criminalising drug use and say this new market is the priority.”

Big companies, big business
Jaber said local farmers would be able to benefit from the sector once a long-awaited amnesty bill is passed expunging the criminal records of cannabis farmers and users, who he said should be seen as “victims”.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government has committed to endorsing an amnesty bill, though who exactly would be included is not clear.

Jaber said the draft law was not meant to address the issue of decriminalising drug users. “One way or another, the state will have to deal with that because the prisons are full,” he told Al Jazeera.

However, he predicted the new legal cannabis market would move forward with or without the involvement of those who have been criminalised by the illegal sector.

“I think big companies will come and other farmers will come and it will be a big business,” he said.

But Nammour warned the law would create a two-tier system where elites benefit from the production of cannabis, while those who have traditionally grown it in impoverished areas will be unable to participate, and everyday Lebanese will be unable to consume any of its products.

He also warned the draft law left the door open to endemic corruption in Lebanon. The commission tasked with overseeing the sector is funded by the licences it issues, while it is at the same time supposed to regulate licensing and prevent a monopoly or oversupply in the market.

https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/lebanon-set-legalise-medical-industrial-cannabis-cultivation-200312165832022.html

Hospitals on the front lines of Lebanon’s coronavirus outbreak have either turned away undocumented people or are setting prohibitively high costs for tests, leading them to fear for their health and wellbeing.

Al Jazeera spoke with two former domestic workers of Ethiopian origin who sought testing at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH), the main COVID-19 testing and treatment centre in the country.

Both said they were turned away because they did not have identification documents.

Many live-in migrant domestic workers in Lebanon are left without documents when they escape abusive employers, because of the pervasive practice of employers confiscating passports and IDs.

When asked for comment, a source at RHUH, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the hospital’s policy was to turn away those without documents so long as they were not in need of emergency care.

“We must provide the state with the name of any person who we test, so that if it is positive we can inform both the state and the person. We can’t do that without a name,” the source said, adding that they could not rely simply on contact information.

“To be very clear, anyone who comes to us in an emergency condition and needs treatment will be given treatment, but if they are not an emergency case we can’t,” the source said.

Health Minister Hamad Hasan did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, an employee at the coronavirus ward of Beirut’s St George Hospital, one of the largest in the capital, told Al Jazeera that undocumented people would have to pay for testing themselves, at a cost of 750,000 Lebanese pounds (about $498).

It is a prohibitively high cost for people who struggle to pay for basic needs such as food and rent.

The employee said patients were first given blood and lung scans, then another more precise scan, and only then, if all indicators pointed towards the coronavirus, a COVID-19 test.

The test itself is available at some private clinics at a cost of about 150,000 Lebanese pounds (about $99).

As of Saturday, Lebanon had recorded 412 cases of COVID-19, with eight deaths and 27 recoveries, according to government statistics. At the current rate, the number of cases is doubling every five to six days.

Fear of spread
Tenteb, a 32-year-old former domestic worker who has lived in Lebanon for more than 10 years, told Al Jazeera she began feeling coronavirus-like symptoms – strong cough and headache – in early March.

“I got very scared, because I am living in a three-room apartment with 14 people,” she said, “all of them former domestic workers who either ran away from abusive employers or were laid off during Lebanon’s economic crisis.”

An estimated 250,000 domestic workers reside in Lebanon, coming from a host of African and Southeast Asian countries.

Most earned monthly wages equating to between $150 and $250 before Lebanon began its slide into economic and financial crisis in 2019.

The subsequent depreciation of the local currency by more than 40 percent has in turn slashed the value of their wages, and many Lebanese employers have cited the economic crisis as a reason to pay domestic workers late, or not at all.

Under the notorious kafala system, domestic workers cannot leave without their employers’ consent. This leads many to languish in abusive and difficult working conditions, while others decide to escape, effectively becoming illegal residents in Lebanon.

Escapees face imprisonment, fines and deportation if they are caught by authorities and so many, like Tenteb, are left living in limbo.

Tenteb said only two of the 14 women at her residence, including herself, were still earning a salary before the coronavirus outbreak began in Lebanon in late February.

Now, both of them have been laid off due to a partial national lockdown aimed at stopping the spread of the virus.

She said she suspected her strong cough had led her employer to let her go, and she immediately sought testing for the coronavirus. But she was turned back from RHUH and was left to self-medicate with “antibiotics, vitamins and panadol”.

Tenteb still does not know whether she has COVID-19, and says that those she lives with have “thankfully not yet developed any symptoms”.

‘Black or white’
Mary, a former domestic worker who began experiencing symptoms last week, was turned away from the RHUH and was unable to afford a test at the St George Hospital.

Speaking on behalf of Mary due to a language barrier, Rosa, a 29-year-old Ethiopian woman who has lived in Lebanon for five years, said they had struggled to move from one hospital to another as Mary’s symptoms grew worse.

Rosa said they eventually paid for a coronavirus test at a hospital on the southern outskirts of Beirut. It came back negative.

“While that’s great, it’s not the most important point here,” Rosa said. “Ok, she’s foreign and has no papers, but this is a dangerous virus that Europe can’t even deal with.”

“How will Lebanon control this virus if they do this? This is more important than anything: documents, nationality, black or white. We all live here together in Lebanon. I don’t know how they think.”

Diala Haidar, a Lebanon campaigner at Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera that, under the human right to health: “Healthcare goods, facilities and services should be available and accessible to everyone without discrimination, especially to the most vulnerable or marginalised groups of the population, [including undocumented migrants].”

Lebanon has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which guarantees “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”, including the “prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases”.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/undocumented-struggle-access-coronavirus-tests-lebanon-200328114859620.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links