TIRANA, Oct. 8 – Albanian police have destroyed 2.4 million cannabis plants so far this year, Albania’s top police officer said in a press conference.
The amount seized has a market value of $3.3 billion, equal to one-third of Albania’s gross domestic product, according to experts.
Police Director General Haki Cako said 8,900 police officers have taken part in 1,260 operations against drug traffickers, costing the state budget $4 million.
So far, 248 people have been arrested for cultivating and distributing the illegal substance and 1,592 cannabis growers have been referred to prosecutors. If found guilty, those who have been arrested, face five to ten years in prison.
Cako presented the numbers at a press conference marking the end of a mission of aerial monitoring conducted by an Italian law enforcement agency, Guardia di Finanza, which has been assisting Albanian authorities in the fight against narcotics since 2012.
From June to September, the planes used by Guardia di Finanza identified 2,086 plots cultivated with marijuana, and Albanian police managed to intervene in about 2,022 of these plots, according to Cako.
This year, planes used by Italian officers flew on 17 percent of Albanian territory, revealing that despite the Albanian police’s efforts against marijuana cultivation, the phenomenon is expanding.
Italian officers said Albania’s marijuana surface increased by five times three years after the Socialist-led government destroyed the marijuana stronghold in Lazarat, a village in southern Albania, once lawless but now under police control.
For decades this cannabis hotspot produced over 900 tons of marijuana per year. In 2013, Lazarat had 319 hectares of cannabis plantations. In 2015, the area cultivated in Albania was downsized to 44.7 hectares, only to expand to 213 hectares in 2016, according to police monitoring.
Cako said this year the number of small plots of cannabis cultivation in remote areas of difficult access has increased, hence making the work law enforcement officials difficult if not impossible.
“The trend this year is that in 70 percent of the territory, traffickers are growing a cannabis plant called the ‘Vietnamese’ which has a short growing cycle of 45 days and lower profitability,” Cako told journalists, adding that most of the product has been destined for Italy, Greece, Kosovo and Montenegro.
Officers from Guardia di Finanza praised the commitment of Albanian police and added they will continue their monitoring of the country’s territory.
“The campaign will continue in May. We will consider the possibility of participating operations of seizing and destroying narcotics as well as deploying monitors from other partner countries,” said Jeselito Minuto, the head of the Naval Air Forces of Guardia di Finanza.
Report adds to political debate
The report by the Albanian police and Italian officials has added fuel to the ongoing political debate on the country’s drug cultivation problems.
The head of Albania’s main opposition Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, said the figures published by Guardia di Finanza were alarming, and he blamed the left wing government for the increase in cannabis cultivation in Albania.
He accused Prime Minister Edi Rama and Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri of being directly responsible for the situation.
“They are the Al Capone’s of Albania. Drugs plantations have increased by five times. They are close collaborators of drug cartels,” Basha said, calling for the immediate dismissal of Tahiri.
Tahiri responded saying that “the ongoing problem of marijuana plantations is finally headed to a solution.”
The Democrats called for the resignation of Tahiri in September as well after an Italian pilot, Andrea Guidi, crash landed in a field in Albania. He told prosecutors he “was flying over Albania to inspect the vast, unpopulated terrain, which he planned to use two weeks later to traffic over 200 kg of cannabis,” according to media reports.
In the past couple of years, small planes have been the favorite means of drug transport. Two years ago, a piper single-engine plane crashed in the area of Divjaka 80 kilometers southwest of the capital, Tirana. Police found 460 kilograms of marijuana nearby about to be loaded in the plane. The Italian pilot Giorgio Riformato, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for international drug trafficking. Another six co-defendants were sentenced to a total of 47 years behind bars.
Albania has been a major cannabis producer for all of Europe, particularly during the last decade when the village of Lazarat continued fueling the cannabis trafficking from Albania to the rest of the continent.
The five-day campaign against drug traffickers in 2013, crushed their operations in Lazarat, but appears to have spread the problem in other parts of the country.
Earlier this month, police seized three metric tons of half dried cannabis and destroyed some 13,000 plants in the district of Mat, 90 kilometers north of the capital, Tirana, the latest in ongoing busts during the marijuana growing season.
