In addition to planning to target smugglers, authorities say they will now shift their attention to making cultivation a less profitable proposition.
TIRANA, April 10 – A sign just south of the southern Albanian city of Gjirokastra shows the road to one of Albania’s most notorious places – Lazarat. The village has been making international headlines for all the wrong reasons: marijuana forests, gun-toting grandmas and being a no-go area for Albanian police, who in the past have been met with the type of firepower seen only in war zones.
The village is one of Europe’s largest marijuana producers and since 2004 has been largely out of the control of police, following a shootout that led to the destruction of the local police station. Since then law enforcement officials control what comes in and out of the village of about 7,000, but do not go inside. The stalemate has been broken only once, when authorities tried to destroy some marijuana plants in the outskirts of the village in 2012, only to be repelled by massive firepower coming from armed gangs.
Lazarat is an embarrassment for the Albanian government, but authorities have said for years that the bloodshed that would be involved should the authorities decide to intervene is not worth the reward. A jaded Albanian public sees the authorities’ lack of power with suspicion tied to widespread perceptions of corruption and the alleged political ties of criminal syndicates.
For this year, at least, authorities have in effect given up trying to stop cultivation in places like Lazarat, increasing their efforts to catch up with the smugglers after the marijuana has been harvested. And this is the high season. A series of busts in recent weeks indicate traffickers are trying to smuggle massive quantities of the drug from Albania to EU countries – amounts that indicate cultivation is not only taking place in Lazarat, but in other places as well as, law enforcement experts say.
Tons of drugs piling up
To get an indication of just how much marijuana is being produced, one only needs to look at the massive hauls police are catching on a daily basis in Albania and neighboring destination countries. Last week alone there was about 8 metric tons of marijuana seized by Albanian, Italian and Croatian authorities. That’s in addition to the 15 metric tons of cannabis that Albanian police alone has seized since the start of the year aboard tucks or other vehicles trying to board ferries or be smuggled through other means to nearby Italy.
Last Monday, for example, police in the western port city of Durres stopped a Macedonian truck with some 2.2 metric tons of marijuana. A day earlier, police seized 1.6 metric tons of cannabis, believed to be destined to nearby Italy, found hidden in a minivan at a forest in Vlora district. They also seized another vehicle, a tractor and fuel believed to serve for a speedboat that would transport it. Two people have been detained and a few others have been declared at large.
The busts inside the country come as over the weekend police in Croatia seized more than 800 kilograms of marijuana smuggled over the Adriatic Sea from Albania in a fishing boat. They said the drugs’ value was estimated at some 1.3 million euros. Eight Croatian and two Bosnian citizens have been detained, while the boat owner from Albania remains at large.
Italian police said Sunday they had also netted 2 metric tons of drugs produced in Albania. During the operation codenamed Luna Rossa authorities busted 8 Italians from Sicily and a small fishing boat with some 125 packages full of a total of 2 tons of marijuana on the board of the vessel. The ship was loaded in Greece, while the drug was produced in Albania, authorities said.
In addition to the smuggling operations, police also said that last week in southern Albania, in Saranda district, police destroyed some 2,000 plants of cannabis and arrested three people for growing it.
No legalization planned, says prime minister
With the massive task at hand to fight the production and smuggling of marijuana, some have suggested that Albania legalize its production and regulate it so it can benefit from tax revenue and get rid of the criminal elements associated with its production.
It is a discussion that Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says cannot take place at this time, adding that he is against any sort of legalization.
“Marijuana legalization is a debate which I would prefer not to have in Albania. It is not up to Albania to go further, to take such a decision at a time when the issue of legalizing marijuana is an open issue for more developed countries in the EU. For the moment we are totally focused in a zero-tolerance fight against organized crime and any form of traffic,” Rama said during a primetime talk show led by Bruno Vespa of the Italian public broadcaster Rai.
Rai shinned a bright light on Albania’s marijuana problem last week, the latest in a series of large global media outlets to do so.
Italy in particular is interested in helping Albania get rid of the problem as much of the drug ends up on its shores. Rama also urged closer cooperation between the police in Albania and Italy, which authorities agree seems to be the main market for Albanian marijuana.
An estimate from the Italian police last year showed that Lazarat alone produces up to 900 metric tons of cannabis sativa, or marijuana, a year, with a street value of some 4.5 billion euros – the equivalent of half of Albania’s GDP.
Jobs, development seen as answer
With that type of money on the line, it is easy to understand why villagers in Lazarat insist on growing the drugs at a time when jobs and development in the area is scarce. It is something Albanian authorities understand are trying to address.
Last week, the country’s central government and local authorities held the first in a series for lectures for young high school students in Lazarat, urging them and their families not to cultivate the drugs, promising training and jobs instead, something the students themselves said they would prefer over the illegal activity of their parents.
To address these concerns, the government says it wants to steer the discussion away from simply destroying marijuana production to preventing it from taking place in the first place through development and job opportunities in places like Lazarat.
Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri told the Italian broadcaster that Lazarat should not be “fought but saved,” adding that the government would focus on investment and employment in the commune, thus attracting the residents away from the lure of marijuana money.
“A police operation is simply not enough, because one has to think about tomorrow’s issues too,” he said. “Economic and social development are the better answer.”
