The once mythical cannabis village of Albania stands desperatly clean as the rest of the country gets covered with illegal cultivation

While opossition and other actors are calling on the Albanian government to step up its fight against the huge uncontrolable surge in cannabis cultivation accross the country, the residents of the once mythical and ‘untouchable’ cannabis village of Lazarat, just minutes from the southern city of Gjirokastra, say that their village was unfairly targeted two years ago.

According to Top Channel’s special reporting in Lazarat, its inhabitants believe that the Government discriminated against their village while it has done nothing to stop those criminals who control the drug trafficking routes.

The walls of Lazarat are marked with “F… Police” and “F… Edi” in clear protest against Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama who two years ago decided to storm into the ‘untouchable’ village and arrested around 150 people who were found guilty of cultivating cannabis in the village.

At the time, Edi Rama broke a myth and convinced its EU counterparts and his citizens that Albania was serious about fighting drug cultivation and trafficking.

Two years later, the country is cynically filled with cannabis plantations from north to south as a confidential source tells Tirana Echo that scanning of Albanian territory done with Italian help, has shown that there is four times more cultivation than one year ago, amid allegations that the police are involved in turning a blind eye to the existence of plantations and cooperating with the traffickers.

If this is officially confirmed, it would mean the fight against the myth of Lazarat was a PR stunt and the authorities had other plans instead, to transfer cultivation across less controlable areas of the country.

‘We are enraged! There’s no more hope! They killed the hope for a job opportunity’ says another resident of Lazarat, showing the despair of hundreds of villagers who once made lucrative sums of money through planting and cultivating some of the best quality cannabis you could find in the top European destinations such as Amsterdam.

Source: Top Channel