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Albania
Cannabis in Albania is illegal, but the plants is widely cultivated. It is not too difficult to find cannabis and when caught with a small amount for personal use, there will most likely be no prosecution.
Improve informationHemp
Albania regulations permits licensed hemp farming for varieties containing less than 0.1% THC. No varieties have been approved. No licenses have been give since 2000.
Politics
Albania Goes to War With Pot Farmers
There's a new war in the Balkans: Albanian police versus the farmers who have made the country Europe's biggest producer of illegal marijuana. After years of turning a blind eye to the trade that rakes in billions of dollars a year—almost half the country's GDP—hundreds of police officers backed by armored vehicles have been deployed to the pot-farming village of Lazarat and are battling villagers armed with RPGs, mortars, and machine guns, the AP reports. The government says it is now in control of around half the village and has burned 11 tons of marijuana, a small fraction of the 900 tons the village is believed to produce every year.
The crackdown, which has only injured one police officer and three villagers despite the heavy gunfire, is part of the new Socialist government's attempt to stamp out the trade and boost its bid to join the European Union, the BBC reports. At Bloomberg, Leonid Bershidsky says he has a better idea. "Brussels should consider legalizing marijuana throughout the EU," he writes. "Then Albania, with its well-developed cannabis industry, could be welcomed to the union as a country with a legitimate, honorable specialization."
References
Cannabis in Albania
Use of cannabis in present-day Albania is widespread, and small quantities of the drug can be purchased in most urban areas.
Europe outdoor cannabis capital
Albania has become the largest producer of outdoor-grown cannabis in Europe. In a nation that is still poor it's a billion-euro industry.
Albania Goes to War With Pot Farmers
Hundreds of cops descend on lawless villageHistory
Criminal groups from Greece began to establish cannabis plantations
1991
in southern areas near the Greek border, and the local Albanian farmers embraced an opportunity for some level of financial stability in the turbulent economic situation.
In 2012, Albania seized 21.2 metric tons of cannabis
2012
nearly twice the amount seized in 2011.
Albanian State Police (ASP) tried to shut down production in Lazarat
2013
one of the heaviest producing towns in the mountainous southern regions that are said to be the "heartland" of Albanian cannabis production. Lazarat's villages, 90% of whom are thought to be involved in the cannabis trade in some way, mounted an armed resistance against the ASP with even a "70-year old grandmother" involved in the fighting.
