The incomplete medical infrastructure behind Lebanon’s cannabis law

When Lebanon legalized medical cannabis in April 2020, the reform was presented as a major step toward modernizing the country’s agricultural and medical landscape. It was meant to formalize a long-standing illicit crop, draw foreign capital, and establish a regulated medical industry that could serve regional markets. At a time when Lebanon’s GDP was collapsing and its health system was under strain, cannabis reform was promoted as one of the few realistic economic paths available.

Almost six years later, the medical component of the reform remains unrealized. Licensing has not yet begun, production facilities have not moved into the approval phase, and patients in Lebanon still do not have a legal pathway to access medical cannabis. What was introduced as a modern, research-based medical framework is still suspended between law and implementation.

How Lebanon reached a standstill

To understand how this gap emerged, The Beiruter consulted Tatyana Sleiman, Executive Director of Skoun Lebanese Addiction Center. Sleiman told The Beiruter that the long-stalled file was revived under the Aoun–Salam administration, which formed a regulatory body tasked with drafting the procedures needed to implement the law. The regulatory committee responsible for operationalizing the reform, headed by Dr. Dani Fadel, has now finalized draft procedures and submitted them to the cabinet for discussion.

According to a report Skoun shared with The Beiruter concerning the legalization of cannabis cultivation, the success of any medical cannabis framework depends on far more than licensing growers. The report highlights gaps that must be addressed before the medical sector can function, including how patients will safely access cannabis-based treatments, what standards will govern production, and how communities historically involved in cultivation will be integrated into a regulated medical market.

Medical cannabis requires a medical system

While the economic narrative around cannabis has dominated public debate, medical specialists point out that a functional therapeutic framework requires systems Lebanon has not yet built. A peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology examining the feasibility of medical cannabis in Middle Eastern health systems stresses that cannabis cannot be treated as a simple agricultural commodity; it is a clinical product that demands trained physicians, standardized pharmaceutical manufacturing, laboratory testing capacity, regulatory monitoring, and therapeutic guidelines rooted in international evidence.

The Frontiers study notes that in places where medical cannabis reforms have struggled to take shape, the main obstacle has not been legalization itself but the absence of a medical ecosystem capable of managing it. Lebanon’s stalled rollout reflects that pattern: legislation created a pathway, but the health sector was never equipped to carry it forward.

The gap between what the law envisioned and what the medical system can support has had direct consequences for patients. Individuals living with chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, cancer-related nausea, and other conditions for which cannabis-based therapies are widely recognized remain without any lawful access in Lebanon. As noted in the Skoun report, the lack of a regulated medical framework increases the likelihood that patients will turn to informal or illicit sources, where dosage, purity, and safety cannot be guaranteed. The report underscores that any medical cannabis sector must be anchored in public health principles rather than treated solely as an economic venture.

A system waiting for activation

Lebanon now sits at a critical juncture. Draft procedures exist, but the cabinet has yet to adopt or publish them. Health specialists are prepared to engage once a system is in place, while agricultural stakeholders express confidence in Lebanon’s cultivation capacity but lack a legal mechanism to produce or export. Whether the country moves forward depends on whether policymakers choose to activate the framework they legislated four years ago. Until then, medical cannabis remains legal in principle but inaccessible in practice.