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The Albanian Parliament on Friday legalized cannabis for medical purposes in a country once known as a European crossroads for marijuana trafficking.
The Parliament voted 69-23 to allow limited and controlled growth of cannabis plants, a move harshly contested by the opposition.
It was not clear how the medical cannabis will be regulated. The government believes that allowing limited production of cannabis can boost tax revenue.
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A general view of a cannabis plant grown for health purposes in Colombia on July 18, 2023. (Juancho Torres/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Marijuana growing flourished in Albania in the past as drug traffickers exploited a lack of strong governance in the post-Communist country.
After coming to power in 2013, the left-wing Socialist Party government of Prime Minister Edi Rama set destroying cannabis plants as a main target.
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Over the next two years it destroyed millions of cannabis plants with an estimated market value of $8.5 billion, more than two-thirds of the country’s annual gross domestic product at that time.
In 2014, a police officer was fatally shot during a crackdown on a southern village using armored personnel carriers. Police came under automatic weapon and rocket fire from drug growers.
Albania is still a main route for trafficking hard drugs. Police still crack down on isolated cases of cannabis growing, but much less often than a decade ago.