TIRANA, Aug. 11 – In what has become a weekly occurrence over the summer, police have reported the discovery and destruction of thousands of marijuana plants across Albania, from Puka in the north to Tepelena in the south.
The marijuana growing cycle is currently nearing the harvesting stage, so police have a limited time to fight the growers and traffickers directly in the growing areas, authorities say.
But they are also facing a new trend: Cultivation in isolated rural areas where the drugs can be found from the air and destroyed but those responsible are hard to catch.
Not even the Albanian-Greek border has been safe, police report, as cultivated areas have been found right on the border as well as on both sides of it.
Police suspect that the trend is driven by criminal networks that pay local farmers to tend the plants, and then organize collection and transportation to Italy and Greece.
The new local administrations that have come out of the June 21 elections are yet to fully start working with police on the matter. Local authorities have a legal obligation to inform police of areas planted with marijuana.
After police busted the main production area of Lazarat last year, cultivation has spread to other areas. Experts are worried because marijuana cultivation produces a chain effect on local farmers such as the abandonment of land for other crops and small businesses in rural areas. Criminal groups grow in these areas as well.
In Gjirokastra County, 1,600 plants were destroyed this week alone, for example, some of it within walking distance of the main Kakavija border crossing with Greece.
Police in northern Shkodra County also said they found and destroyed 3,215 narcotic plants on Monday. Most of the plants had reach 80 cm height, police said, adding they are working to identify and apprehend the drug growers, who face charges of “cultivation of narcotic plants.
In addition, in the eastern region of Librazhd, following a several-day investigation, police conducted an anti-cannabis operation that led to the arrest of four people charged with cultivation of narcotic plants in complicity, illegal possession of ammunition and production and sale of narcotic substances.
