Epidemy of Cannabis cultivation will have detrimental effects on the economy of Albania, says economic expert.

Tirana – The massive cultivation of cannabis sativa across Albania will have detrimental effects on the future of national agriculture production and will harm the economy of Albania, as this hugely profitable criminal acitivity is capturing massive land parcels, lures local workforce and may deregulate real estate and tourism sectors due to a rise in money laundering and tax evasion.

According to the Director of the Albanian Center for Economic Research Zef Preci, the deformation of the markets and the effects of this criminal economy will have a lasting effect on the future economic outlook of Albania.

“The cannabis cultivation has now turned into a national epidemy, capturing large agicultural parcels across the country which could have been used instead for longer term agricultural and livestock production, while the local work force is being engaged in this criminal activity instead of being invested for more profitable legal entreprises” said Preci to weekly Albanian economic magazine ‘Monitor’.

Zef Preci warns that the income generated by the massive illegal cultivation of cannabis all over the country will concentrate huge criminal liquidity in the hands of a limited number of individuals close to power who will inject the money into the Albanian economy and subsequently  raise real estate prices and overhaul the local labor market.

Local people are already refusing to work in other conventional sectors of the economy like tourism or agro-processing as they make better and quicker money across cannabis parcels.

Experts have warned for months that illegal cannabis cultivation will harm Albania’s image and will eventually empower a criminal class of people who in turn will seize control of the political and economic pillars of Albania, raise the levels of organized crime in the region, diminish people’s will to work in traditional agro-processing activities, ultimately deforming the political vote of the people and capturing political representation in parliament as well as key departments in the government.

The current critical situation resembles more to that of the 1996 pyramid schemes which brought down the Albanian economy, than 2016 where people making a living without a proper job and evading taxes should have been unimaginable.

Zef Preci, Director of Albanian Center for Economic Research

“All of the above, coupled with seasonal short term employment and the injection of such income into public consumption, will take the Albanian economy into a dangereous spiral of unknown uncertainty, with unpredictable long-term effects on the economic growth, FDI and stability of the country” concludes Preci.

Cannabis cultivation has been the norm in Albania during the past decade, with the village of Lazarat, Europe’s Drug Capital in southern Albania leading the way in cultivation and trafficking of the highly profitable plant.

Since the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama totally dismantled the Lazarat network in 2014, cultivation has spread across the country, provoking highly charged political clashes in parliament and raising red flags in neighboring Italy and Greece who are primary recepients of the packed drug which then find its way across the European illegal markets.

Regular media reports of highy criminal gangs and drug barons running the show in collaboration with local police are widespread while the European Commission is expected to highlight the growing problem in its upcoming progress report assessing Albania’s progress towards EU membership.

Opposition Democratic Party accused Edi Rama Socialists of running a mafia-style national operation which is fully controlled and managed by the Minister of Interior Saimir Tahiri and his police chiefs.

The latest national police report, compiled with Italy’s Guardia di Finanza assistance, confirmed that cannabis cultivation in Albania is now 5 times higher than that of last year. Over 2,4 million Marijuana plants have been destroyed this year alone by the Albanian police.