El-Sissi, a military officer who has been running the country since deposing its elected president in 2013, takes the microphone, says a few words, then starts to laugh.
Cannabis has been part of Middle Eastern culture for ages.
Back in his native Damascus, Mahmoud said he and his friends smoked hashish, or cannabis resin, and took amphetamine pills — known by the brand name Captagon — for fun.
But Mahmoud says only his closest friends knew about his recreational drug use.
“Data from the Middle East is scarce, and therefore we cannot say anything about any increasing trend in drug use for the region,” a spokesperson from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, told DW.