Tag: albania

Albania Government Approves Medical Cannabis Cultivation

Written by Johnny Green on June 9, 2025. Posted in Business, Policy.

As medical cannabis policy and regulatory reform continues to sweep across the European continent, the latest country to witness modernization approval by lawmakers is Albania, where the nation’s government reportedly approved licenses for a significant amount of medical cannabis and industrial hemp cultivation.

“The Albanian government has approved the cultivation of cannabis for medical and industrial purposes, issuing licenses covering 29,000 hectares of land stretching from the north to the south of the country — a move hailed by officials as a boost to the economy but sharply criticized by the opposition and experts as a potential gateway to state capture by organized crime.” reported Tirana Times in its local coverage.

“While the official legal cap for cultivation remains 200 hectares, the government’s preliminary license allocations suggest a far greater scope — one that opposition figures claim could result in the planting of over 1.4 billion cannabis plants.” the outlet also reported.

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), Albania is “the largest outdoor producer of cannabis in the region and there has recently been an increase in indoor cannabis cultivation.”

“In Albania, following a peak in 2017 when over 78 tonnes of herbal cannabis were seized, a steep downward trend was noted, with only 4.3 tonnes seized in 2020 and, according to preliminary data, approximately 3.6 tonnes in 2021.” EMCDDA also reported.

The emerging legal cannabis and hemp industries allow Albania’s farmers to cultivate their crops legally and to have their harvests provided to domestic and international medical patients rather than the unregulated market. However, that opportunity is only as good as the laws and regulations that are implemented in the Balkan country.

At the recent International Cannabis Business Conference in Berlin, leading international cannabis industry economist Beau Whitney, founder of Whitney Economics, estimated that the potential global medical and adult-use cannabis market is roughly $237.8 billion. Mr. Whitney estimated that the value of the global industrial hemp industry could be $456.2 billion.

Albanian Parliament Approves Medical Cannabis Legalization Measure

Written by Johnny Green on July 24, 2023. Posted in Policy.

Albania’s Parliament recently approved a medical cannabis legalization measure. The bill, which appears to be a fairly general piece of legislation that is short on a lot of granular details, was approved by a 69-23 vote.

The successful medical cannabis legalization vote came amidst strong pushback from domestic cannabis opponents in Albania. The European nation has long served as a fairly difficult place to achieve reform due to the stigma surrounding the nation’s unregulated drug trade. Historically, Albania was a popular route for smuggling unregulated drugs, including unregulated cannabis.

Limited cultivation was approved as part of the measure, and that specific provision was subject to a particularly heavy focus by cannabis opponents who wished to keep full cannabis cultivation prohibition in place, regardless of the purpose of the proposed cultivation.

According to the Associated Press, when the left-wing Socialist Party government of Prime Minister Edi Rama took power in 2013 Albania’s government spent the next two years destroying illegal cannabis plants with “an estimated market value of 7 billion euros ($8.5 billion), more than two-thirds of the country’s annual gross domestic product at that time.”

While Albania remains a popular route for smugglers, and unregulated cannabis is still cultivated domestically, the war on cannabis is not at the fevered pitch that it was at roughly a decade ago. Albania would be wise to continue to work to modernize its medical cannabis policies, and hopefully, its adult-use cannabis policies as well.

Albania is home to a thriving cannabis community, albeit an unregulated one, and that is far from a new thing. That was very apparent in Season 3 of the hit cannabis reality show Growing Belushi in which famed entertainer and International Cannabis Business Conference speaker alumni Jim Belushi visited the country to discuss cannabis policy and industry.

Albania’s new law creates the ‘National Agency for the Control of Cannabis’ which will be tasked with overseeing the nation’s eventual legal medical cannabis industry.

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Albanian Prime Minister Discusses Medical Cannabis

Written by Johnny Green on March 2, 2022. Posted in Politics.

Albania is home to one of the most popular cannabis smuggling routes on earth and is also home to a significant amount of unregulated cannabis cultivation.

How much cannabis is actually cultivated and/or smuggled through Albania in a year is anyone’s guess, however, it’s a safe bet that the number is measured in tons instead of kilos.

Authorities in Albania have cracked down hard on the illegal cannabis trade in recent years, yet, the industry continues to thrive within Albania’s borders and domestically cultivated cannabis is transported and sold throughout Europe.

Cannabis activists in Europe have tried very hard to reform Albania’s cannabis laws for many years. Unfortunately, even medical cannabis reform has remained elusive, although that may be changing soon. Per Albanian Daily News:

Prime Minister Edi Rama has reopened the topic of legalization of the medical cannabis, during a meeting with several citizens within the initiative of the National Counselling. The head of government showed how the cutlivation of medical cannabis would work if it were legalized.

According to Rama, the whole process would be strictly monitored, and cannabis would be used mainly for exports.

Prime Minister Rama was very clear that cannabis would be tightly controlled, and provided no timeline for any action on implementing a regulated medical cannabis program. Until any specifics surface, cannabis advocates should temper expectations.

Based on the Prime Minister’s comments, there doesn’t appear to be a desire to focus on helping suffering patients in Albania for the time being, which is truly unfortunate.

Setting up an industry geared only towards profiting from exports is helpful economically, however, it’s far from a compassionate-focused approach.

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Albania Moves Closer To Legal Cannabis Cultivation

Written by Marguerite Arnold on May 19, 2020. Posted in Medical.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the country’s legislators are close to concluding a draft law allowing the cultivation of medical cannabis. He made the announcement during a live conference of “Europe Day” on May 9.

Albania has long been criticized for being a major transit point for drugs of all kinds entering Europe from Asia and Latin America as well as a major source of black market cannabis grown in the country itself.

The Albanian proposal appears to be modeled on its neighbour, North Macedonia’s model, with a long stretch of coast on the Mediterranean. The country, like North Macedonia, also borders Greece to the south.

However, like North Macedonia, successful companies will be required to have a million euro bank guarantee and at least 15 employees. This means that only the largest cultivators, and presumably those with foreign contacts, will be able to qualify for licenses. Like North Macedonia, Albania is not yet a part of the EU. Indeed efforts to control illegal trafficking are part of the country’s plan to become an EU state.

Currently, cannabis possession in the country is still illegal. There is no medical marijuana program, although presumably, the passage of the new law will begin to create a structured pathway for patients to access the drug and doctors to prescribe it.

Illicit cannabis trafficking first came to the attention of authorities in the 1990s after the fall of the communist state, when cannabis cultivation that had mainly been concentrated in the south of the country became more widespread – and for the simple reason of trying to find some kind of economic stabilization in the turbulent years that followed, including a bloody civil war.

In 2012, Albanian police seized almost twice as much illicitly grown cannabis as they had the year before. In 2013, Albania made global headlines when police tried to shut down production in Lazarat, a region considered the centre of illicit production in the mountainous southern region of the country. About 90% of the villages in the region were thought to be involved in the illegal trade of cannabis in some way. Indeed villagers mounted an armed resistance that involved the populace of all ages.

Between 2014 and 2018, police in Albania cracked down dramatically on illegal cultivation of the plant. In 2016, estimates placed the illegal market at 3.5 billion euros – or about half of the entire Albanian GDP for the year. By the mid-2000’s, 77% of the cannabis in Italy actually originated in Albania, carried across the Ionian Sea in speedboats.

For an up-to-date snapshot of the European cannabis market, be sure to book your tickets for the return of the International Cannabis Business Conference to Europe in Fall 2020

Albania Is Close To Legalizing Medical Cannabis

Written by Johnny Green on May 12, 2020. Posted in Medical.

Cannabis is medicine. That is a fact that is worth repeating over and over. For proof of that fact, all people have to do is look at the growing body of studies and research backing up the claim, as well as the countless personal testimonies of suffering patients that have successfully treated their condition(s) with medical cannabis.

The cannabis plant has been used as a medicine for many centuries, and by that measure, it was only fairly recently that anyone claimed that cannabis is not medicine. Fortunately for suffering patients, more and more countries are getting on the right side of history and legalizing cannabis for medical use.

Some countries still prohibit medical cannabis, however, some of them are moving in the right direction. One of those countries is Albania, which recently announced that it is very close to unveiling a draft proposal that would legalize medical cannabis. Per Exit News:

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced today that the government is preparing a draft law that would legalize the cultivation of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

During a joint conference with EU ambassador Luigi Soreca, Rama said that the government has been working with foreign and local advisers for a year and the draft law would be made public soon. He also highlighted the importance of learning from other countries’ experiences with medical marijuana.

For what it’s worth, Albania will be able to take the best components of other countries’ medical policies and incorporate them into their own law. It obviously would have been better if Albania legalized medical cannabis years ago, or even better, never prohibited medical cannabis in the first place.

However, it is better to look forward than to dwell on the past for the purpose of this policy change, and hopefully Albania’s medical cannabis model helps as many suffering patients as possible. It will be disheartening if Albania’s medical cannabis program proves to be too limited, with suffering patients failing to receive safe access to a proven medicine. Ultimately, only time will tell what happens.