Customs officials Tuesday discovered three tons of Captagon pills and hash at the Beirut port destined for Egypt, Lebanon's finance minister said.

In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Syrian refugees wearing scarves over their faces work in fields of cannabis plants. Migrant workers from neighbouring Syria have done this work for many years, spending a few months a year in the region before returning home. However, since the rise of Islamic State, this has become a task that could put them, and their family back in Syria, at risk of harm including death because working with, getting close to or consuming drugs and alcohol is considered a sin in Islam. "If Islamic State back home knew we work with hashish, they would cut us" with knives, says Aisha, 15.

A woman and a 13-year-old boy sift through the twigs and buds of the recent harvest inside a garage filled with green dust and piles of cannabis.

BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon (Reuters) - Inside a garage in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley filled with green dust and piles of cannabis, stand a woman and a 13-year-old boy, sifting through the twigs and buds of the recent harvest.

They are Muslim refugees from Raqqa province - de facto capital in Syria of Islamic State fighters - and part of an extended family of about 25 that fled in the past few years to live in tents in the relative safety of a Lebanese village.

The 29-year-old woman, who declined to be identified for safety reasons, left two months ago with her youngest son, 5, to join family including cousins, second cousins and grandparents.

In a village in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Syrians from Raqqa have been coming to harvest cannabis for almost a decade. Now, Raqqa is under Islamic State control and the border crossing is more difficult than ever.

One woman recently risked her life for work in Lebanon. Like the hundreds of harvesters in the village, she's not simply a migrant from Syria — she's from the ISIS capital of Raqqa, some 300 miles away.

MP Walid Jumblatt tweeted last year, “It is time to legalize growing cannabis in Lebanon.” His tweet did not pass unnoticed, especially with all the controversy it raised, while it received broad acclaim from hundreds of cannabis backers in Baalbek, in particular those wanted by the judiciary. They support his stance from a strictly economic point of view, as most of them only plant cannabis — used to make marijuana and hashish — without using it. Instead, they promote it or use it for trade.

This week we will be exploring the status of marijuana within the worlds major religions. We will look at whether usage is condoned or condemned. We begin with Islam, a close second to Christianity as the most popular religion globally.

Islam is the doctrine of the Muslim faith. Like Christianity, it's a monotheistic faith which finds its roots in the Middle East. Islam was revealed to the world by The Prophet Muhammed, sometimes referred to as the Prophet of Allah (the Islamic word for God). The holy text of the Muslim people is called the Quran which is believed to be the word of Allah, dictated verbatim by Muhammad; The Quran is sacred scripture and is followed with dogmatic orthodoxy by the Muslim people. 

The Lebanon County Drug Task Force made two arrests for synthetic marijuana last week and the District Attorney issued a stern warning. Jared Brandt, 26, of 1110 Guilford Street, Lebanon, was arrested on April 23rd. Police say they found a quantity of synthetic marijuana, new packaging and a heat sealer during a search of Brandt’s residence.

Brandt was taken into custody and charged with Possession with Intent to Deliver Synthetic Marijuana, Possession of Synthetic Marijuana, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and Possession of a Designer Drug as well as a parole violation. He was arraigned before MDJ Carl Garver and ordered held in the Lebanon County Correctional Facility in lieu of $25,000 bail.

Bitter hatred and animosity aren’t stopping Shiite Lebanese farmers from selling weed to their sworn enemies — Sunni Islamic State militants — because, well, that’s business.

The Daily Beast spoke with farmers in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, supporters of the embattled Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, who are selling marijuana to Islamic State militants.

Lebanese Shiites typically support Syria’s Assad as a longtime regional ally, and the Islamic State, controlling territory in Syria and Iraq, are staunch enemies of the regime. Additionally, in Iraq, the Islamic State is fighting Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Most Lebanese hash is produced by Shia who are sworn enemies of the so-called Islamic State, but that doesn’t mean they won’t sell them a ton or two.

THE BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon — They are killing Syrians and each other at an astronomical rate but there seems to be one thing that jihadist troops and Assad allies are working together on: getting high on Lebanon’s supply.

Just across a snow-capped mountain range, in the Bekaa Valley, are weed fields tended mostly by poor, Assad-friendly Shia farmers. But business is business. They tell The Daily Beast they are selling their products to ISIS recruits, who are allegedly blazing Lebanese blond and reselling it to fund their atrocities.