Global Ganja Report

Two Israeli ex-prime ministers are now involved in the cannabis industry, and legalization became a key issue in this month's elections. But in a case of strange bedfellows, legalization was aggressively taken up as a campaign plank by the far right.

Israel's internal market for medical cannabis products is limited by the country's relatively small population, but with exports now approved by the cabinet, a multi-billion-dollar industry is foreseen. Since the announcement, share prices of cannabis companies on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange have soared.

In a strange paradox, Turkey's increasingly authoritarian President Erdogan has announced that he wants to expand legal cannabis cultivation in the country. His speech unveiling the proposal even portrayed the plant's prohibition as imposed by Western powers to undermine Turkish agriculture—appealing to his traditional Islamist base, with otherwise conservative instincts.

A parliamentary initiative has been launched to legalize medical marijuana cultivation in fabled hashish producer Lebanon, amid growing proposals for a general legalization of cannabis. But many growers in the Bekaa Valley are watching warily, fearing they will be left behind as foreign capital flows in for a legal industry.

Israel's Knesset overwhelmingly passed a cannabis decriminalization measure—sponsored by the ruling conservative government. This fruit of a long campaign by activists is, however, tentative. The law is set to expire in three years, pending a review of the policy's impacts.

A new cannabis legalization initiative is being pushed for Lebanon, long a legendary hashish producer. This time the idea has won influential international backers. And the cannabis-grower militias have actually mobilized to beat back ISIS incursions into the hashish heartland of Bekaa Valley from neighboring Syria. Is the time finally ripe for the day-lighting of Lebanon's powerful hashish industry?

Despite Saudi Arabia's penchant for beheading hashish smugglers, the stuff just keeps coming in. The latest big haul was reported in early September, when a Border Guard naval patrol seized 258 kilograms of hash at Jeddah, the country's principal Red Sea port. A vessel with three Yemeni nationals on board was also seized in the maritime operation—in what is now a familiar story. The flow of hashish entering from Saudi Arabia's war-torn southern neighbor has been increasing as the conflict in Yemen has escalated—whether it is coming up the Red Sea coast or over the rugged land border of harsh desert and mountains.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) last week issued its World Drug Report 2017—its 20th annual survey of production, trafficking and eradication and enforcement efforts around the globe. In past years, the report has sought to quantify the amount of cannabis cultivated in each producer country—over the past decade consistently placing Morocco in first place, generally followed by Mexico and Paraguay. This general trend continues—with some new variations.