The problem of cannabis cultivation and trafficking in Albania is a serious one. All sides can agree on this. They disagree one everything else.
Each side has its own version of how many hectares are being planted, how much is the quantity being exported illegally, how many policemen are involved in the crime, how much the police and Ministry of Interior are really doing about it, even what kind of seed is being used to get the plant.
For a problem of major importance to the national security and wellbeing, the political discussion actually is an obstacle to a serious consideration to the issue as it downplays the real factors behind the phenomena and deploys regularly aggressive political shame and blame tactics.
A lot of hectares of Albanian soil are occupied by cannabis plants, hundreds of them get burned each week. Kilos and kilos of it are captured almost every day at border checking points. From time to time a small plane breaks a wheel trying to land into some remote makeshift airstrip in an attempt to collect the batch of drugs and transport it overseas.
According to professional independent and foreign sources, the police are working intensively to identify the plantations, destroy them and arrest people. However one cannot be blamed for feeling at least concerned and confused about the extent that the industry is expanding to. While this would require serious analysis and a national commitment to battle it, the worthless political confrontation turn it into a wild circus of data and accusations thrown at the audience.
The cannabis problem in Albania has complex nature as does every drug-related industry in all the world. There is the organized crime factor which steers it forward, meticulously follows it and makes profit out it. There are the determinant economic and social factors that push people into the mindset of cultivating it, taking care of it and eventually transforming it into away of life. There is the consumption side punishing youth most of all other segments and paving the way to harder, more dangerous drugs. There is also the illegal export side which make Albania a threat to the neighbors and tarnishes its reputation and hampers its EU integration project.
The core of the problem that needs to be discussed is the social and economic fabric of current Albania that risks to transform the cannabis production and trade from a national sport to a national economic model. In the conditions of economic deprivation but also of cultural isolation and lack of hope that prevail in rural and remote areas the incentives of supply will always be stronger than the law enforcement punishment. And we can expect then demand to increase as well. A successful combination of policy would include the police work in the top of the pyramid targeting organized crime actors while simultaneously and even more vigorously the rest of the executive and the state invest heavily in more attractive and efficient employment and agricultural policies at the base of the social pyramid to fight the enabling context. Simply increasing the number of policemen to burn and slash the plants will not work and is a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The fight against drugs is the toughest fight of them all. Countless books, movies, serials, accounts and experiences have shown examples from all the corners of the world, from the nearby Sicily to the far flung Colombia and Mexico. These are stories known to all. They show how quickly things degenerate if left
They most importantly show that all actors of society need to fight together otherwise the battle is doomed. It is enough for one traitor of this fight to bring down all the battle. It can be the gory-glorifying media, it can be dishonest politicization, it can be a defiant poor youth which stands by the new-found Mafiosi heroes rather than by the blue uniforms of the state.
Albania has for all its democratic transition years been a major point of drugs transiting and in the latest years a country of origin of cannabis. This is a real problem that requires real efforts before it turns into an unmanaged bitter reality. It cannot be left to politicians alone. It is time to shed the political clout and have a sincere constructive national debate about it.
