All they really want to do is to show that the U.S. cows are no good. Before Lebanon's civil war erupted in 1975, an effort was made to supplant the cannabis with sunflowers. To collect the offered subsidies, many farmers circled their drug fields with a few rings of sunflowers. Fayrouz, a famous Lebanese diva, celebrated that particular endeavor in a 1973 musical. I planted sunflowers, which grew into cannabis.
Farmers still relish the lore of it all.
The civil war proved something of a golden age for illicit crops. Hashish and the newly introduced opium poppy melded well with other dubious activities like training militias, smuggling low-cost electronic devices into Syria and, occasionally, hiding kidnapped Westerners. By the end of the war in 1990, an estimated 75,000 acres, or one-third of the valley's arable land, was devoted to drugs. By 1994 it was all gone. The Lebanese and Syrian governments decided after the war that if they could get off one American blacklist, it was the drug production list.