Police operations net drugs worth 6.2 billion

Albania no longer a country of origin for drugs, says interior minister, applauding police’s success against marijuana growers
TIRANA, Sept. 23 – Following a year-long massive anti-drug campaign that saw the destruction of narcotics worth 6.2 billion, Albania has been taken off the international list of countries of origin for drug production and trafficking, Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri said this week.
Tahiri said at a meeting of law enforcement authorities and representatives of international institutions that authorities have destroyed marijuana of an estimated market value of 6.4 billion euro ($8.2 billion) this year נmore than 60 percent of the country’s annual GDP.
Tahiri said police have destroyed 102 tons of marijuana and 530,000 cannabis plants since March and have arrested or indicted some 1,900 people. More than half of the marijuana was found in the lawless southern village of Lazarat following a dramatic five-day police raid in June. More was found across the country – with the highest concentration in the northern Dukagjin region.
Tahiri said Albania was now no longer a country where drugs are produced, and pledged “an absolute fight against drugs and dirty money.”
“If these drugs had not been destroyed by the State Police, but had instead gone to the ŠEuropean market, the monetary value of drugs seized and destroyed would be 6.4 billion euros,” Tahiri said, adding the figure was staggering, and that the money from drugs enriched the underworld, which then corrupts parts of the political and justice systems.
Present at the event, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Arvizu said he was happy to see the government had the political will to conduct the police operations and commended the planning of the intervention in Lazarat, which was successful without any casualties.
Albanian officials also thanked the Guardia di Finance, an Italian law enforcement body, that aided by monitoring Albania’s territory from the air and told Albanian police exactly where to find the lots where the marijuana had been planted.
Albania had previously been been a major marijuana-producing country and transit point for moving other drugs from Asia and Latin America to Europe.