The Albanian government has claimed to have already won the war against cannabis, yet official stats point to considerable growth in recent years. The phenomenon that had experienced a massive growth by the year 2016, was hit hard from 2017-2018, but what followed was a tendency for more growth.
2016 still remains a record year when it comes to the number of cannabis plants exterminated by the police. Farming had been growing massively throughout the year, and in the 2 years that followed production was cut back to 20 times less than before.
According to the official data provided by the Albanian police in collaboration with the Italian Guarda di Finanza that were based on aerial surveillance operations, from 2019 to 2020 the production rate went back up and the same scenario is playing out as we speak.
Back in 2021, Chief General, Ardi Veliu clashed with General Prosecutor, Olsjan Cela regarding the stats. In fact, according to the state police, the prosecution and the court system had been pardoning and releasing traffickers involved in the cultivation of cannabis.
In recent years, a growing trend has been detected amid cultivators of indoor cannabis, that is grown in closed spaces like storage rooms or grow houses.
In addition, the top 10 cities where traditional outdoor cannabis farms have been identified in our country, are the remote villages found in the Highlands of Shkoder, Kruja, the River of Vlora, Tepelena, Memaliaj, Skrapar, Librazhd and Tirana.
Traffickers exploit free land that doesn’t have official ownership, whilst police have also pointed to one case back in 2020, when Syrian migrants had been employed along with Albanian ones, to work on cannabis parcels. The migrants were using Albania as a transit country, before finding a way to enter to countries in the EU.
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