The incomplete medical infrastructure behind Lebanon’s cannabis law

Lebanon’s medical cannabis law was controversial the moment it passed, hailed by some as a long-overdue modernization effort and criticized by others for arriving without the medical infrastructure needed to support it. As the newly formed cannabis regulatory body prepares to oversee what should be the country’s first harvest cycle, the medical framework the law envisioned still does not exist. 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.

Medical cannabis requires a medical system

While public debate often focuses on the economic potential of cannabis, medical specialists stress that therapeutic use requires systems Lebanon has never built. A peer-reviewed study in Frontiers in Pharmacology examining the feasibility of medical cannabis in Middle Eastern health systems emphasizes that cannabis cannot be treated as a simple agricultural commodity; it is a clinical product that demands trained physicians, pharmaceutical-grade production, laboratory testing capacity, regulatory oversight, and therapeutic guidelines rooted in evidence.

The study notes that in countries where medical cannabis reforms have struggled, the primary barrier has not been legalization itself but the absence of a medical ecosystem capable of managing it. Lebanon’s stalled rollout is emblematic of that pattern: the law created a legal pathway, but the health sector was never equipped to carry it forward.

Where clinical realities fall short

Psychiatric experts echo this assessment. Speaking with The Beiruter, Dr. Rami Bou Khalil, associate professor of psychiatry at Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth and psychiatrist at Hôtel-Dieu de France, notes that Lebanon lacks the foundational clinical readiness to introduce medical cannabis safely. Physicians have received no specialized training, no diagnostic or dosing protocols exist, and health-data systems remain fragmented. Even if regulations were activated tomorrow, he warns, the system “would quickly be overwhelmed.”

The absence of a functioning medical framework has also created unintended consequences: patients have already begun using cannabis under the assumption that it substitutes for medical treatment.

“Many people conflate recreational cannabis with therapeutic cannabinoids such as purified CBD, despite their vastly different compositions and clinical effects,” Bou Khalil said.

What people describe as self-medication, he added, “often amounts to self-harm,” reinforcing dependency cycles, worsening anxiety or depression, and creating reward patterns that mimic treatment but actually exacerbate underlying conditions. Without clinical oversight, patients seeking relief remain vulnerable to unsafe products and harmful consumption habits.

If a medical cannabis regime eventually becomes operational, Bou Khalil argues that psychiatrists and mental-health specialists must play a central role in shaping treatment protocols and assessing patient suitability. Collaboration with oncologists, neurologists, and pain specialists will be essential to guide dosage, indications, and safeguards against misuse.

Yet Bou Khalil cautions that Lebanon must differentiate between decriminalization, which he supports to avoid criminalizing users, and broad legalization, which without safeguards risks increasing consumption in ways the country’s already strained mental-health system is not prepared to absorb.

How Lebanon reached a standstill

To understand how the gap between legalization and implementation emerged, The Beiruter consulted Tatyana Sleiman, Executive Director of Skoun Lebanese Addiction Center. She explained that the long-stalled file was revived under the Aoun–Salam administration, which formed a regulatory body to draft the procedures needed to operationalize the law. The committee, headed by Dr. Dani Fadel, has finalized those procedures and submitted them to the cabinet for discussion, yet they remain unpublished and inactive.

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

A system waiting for activation

Lebanon now sits at a critical juncture. The draft procedures exist, but the cabinet has yet to adopt or release them. Health specialists say they are ready to engage once a viable system is in place, while agricultural stakeholders remain confident in Lebanon’s capacity to cultivate cannabis but lack a legal mechanism to produce or export it. Whether the sector advances now hinges on policymakers’ willingness to activate the medical framework they legislated. Until then, medical cannabis will remain legal on paper yet inaccessible in practice.