Growing Opium in Sinai, and Cannabis, is a relatively new story. Did it start with the blind eye of the authorities? Because the Egyptian  inelegance  agency wanted to encourage pro Egyptian nets? Local initiative? Market pressure from Cairo? incident?
All together probably.
From the minute the nucleus gardens were planted in the Wadis of South Sinai it spread, accompanied by the smell of big money, in most of the Sinai peninsula.
Growing Opium and Cannabis is the major agricultural cultivation of the Bedouins of Sinai. Drugs and tourism. not a bad combination.

Opium

The opium growers of Sinai - video