Albania legalizes medicinal cannabis | high times

Albanian lawmakers on Friday approved a measure to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. According to the Associated Press, the country’s parliament “voted 69-23 to allow limited and controlled cultivation of cannabis plants, a move that was heavily contested by the opposition.”

As the AP noted, the passage of the law is notable given Albania’s history as a “European hub of the marijuana trade.”

“In the past, marijuana cultivation flourished in Albania as drug traffickers took advantage of the post-communist country’s lack of strong governance. After coming to power in 2013, Prime Minister Edi Rama’s left-wing Socialist Party government made the destruction of cannabis crops its main objective,” reported the Associated Press. Over the next two years, millions of cannabis plants were destroyed with an estimated market value of €7 billion ($8.5 billion), more than two-thirds of the country’s annual gross domestic product at the time. In 2014, a police officer was fatally shot with infantry fighting vehicles during a raid on a southern village. The police were fired at by drug growers with automatic weapons and rockets. Albania is still a major route for hard drug trafficking. Police are still cracking down on individual cases of cannabis cultivation, but much less frequently than a decade ago.”

Late last year, a senior Albanian government official was arrested on suspicion of smuggling drugs across the border.

Officer Erisa Fero was the IT director of the country’s top intelligence agency at the time of her arrest.

VICE reported the arrest in January:

“Albanian police said Fero used her official government security ID to evade police checks and searches. Also arrested during the arrest were Fero’s alleged lover, Leke Basha, 30, and a 17-year-old drug-trafficking suspect. According to the police, two suspects on the North Macedonia side of the border who are believed to have received the drugs escaped after a long manhunt.”

Albanian lawmakers began drafting a proposal to legalize medicinal cannabis last summer. As the High Times reported at the time, the bill contained very little detail on how the new medical marijuana program would be regulated.

“The aim of this law is to establish the rules for the cultivation, production and controlled circulation of the cannabis plant and its by-products for medical and industrial purposes by licensed entities and under the supervision of the National Agency for the Control and Supervision of the Cultivation and Processing of the Cannabis Plant for Medical and Industrial Purposes and the Production of Its By-Products,” the draft law reads.

After the measure was passed this week, little appears to have changed. According to the Associated Press, “it was not clear how medicinal cannabis would be regulated,” but the “government believes allowing limited production of cannabis can increase tax revenues.”

Albanian law enforcement agencies have been working for years to thwart illicit drug trafficking in the country, often in collaboration with international police.

In 2017, the Associated Press reported on “a nationwide campaign to prevent cannabis cultivation” in Albania.

“A statement said 3,100 officers were spread across the country checking greenhouses, old army depots and tunnels or abandoned houses that may have hidden cannabis seeds and small plants,” the outlet reported at the time. “Last year, authorities destroyed around 2.5 million marijuana plants, four times more than the year before. Many tons of cannabis were confiscated at border crossings or from boats bound for neighboring countries Italy or Greece.”