Marijuana growing is a serious business in the middle-eastern country of Lebanon, where cannabis farmers in the famed Bekaa Valley recently fought back the country’s security forces, who were trying to destroy their crops.

Using assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars likely supplied by wealthy drug lords, the farmers drove the security forces away after some of their plants had been crushed by tractors.

Between 1975-1990, the years of the Lebanon civil war, the Bekaa Valley produced up to 1,000 tons of cannabis resin annually and 30 to 50 tons of opium. The UN came in and destroyed the crops in the early 90′s, but the crops have returned.

Recent studies from the UN place Lebanon among the top 5 in terms of countries that produce cannabis resin for hash. Security forces keep trying to destroy marijuana crops, but worldwide prohibition means the price remains high, and more growers enter the market to alleviate their crushing poverty.

Most countries still follow the U.S. theory that prohibition and guns are the way to fight drug cartels, when worldwide legalization would collapse the black market and reduce violence in dozens of countries.

- Joe Klare