Pubdate: Thu, 23 Mar 2000
Source: Business Week (US)
Copyright: 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Contact:  1221 Avenue of the Americas, 43rd Floor, New York, NY 10020
Fax: (212) 512-6458
Website: http://www.businessweek.com/
Author: James Drake in Himare
Note: Edited by Harry Maurer

AS POT FARMS SPREAD FAR AND WIDE

THE PRICE IS DROPPING FAST

It's a normal workday in the town of Himare, which is to say the
townspeople aren't doing much at all. In fact, the whole place is
bathed in an almost narcotic stupor.

Only a bunch of snazzily dressed young men sipping cappuccino
underneath the palm trees by the wharfside cafe seem to be engaged in
any business. ''Fifty kilos?

No problem,'' barks one twentysomething lad into his mobile phone.
''It'll be ready tomorrow.''

All along Albania's southern coastline, the black economy is in full
bloom these days -- and so is the green gold that's fueling it. Up in
the hills overlooking the region's secluded inlets and smugglers'
coves, neat plantations of cannabis sativa nestle in the sun, well
watered by irrigation channels tapped from mountain streams, and
guarded by hatchet-faced youths sporting jogging suits and Kalashnikov
rifles. ''It began in 1991,'' recalls 18-year-old Fatos, who tends the
three-acre plot that was returned to his family after Albania's
communist regime folded. ''A Greek businessman brought our village
some hemp seeds to grow as an experiment. The next year we sold seeds
to our neighbors. The year after that, everyone was into it.''

At first, Fatos recalls, Albania's new rulers -- prodded by the
Western governments and agencies they relied on for soft loans and
credits -- tried to nip the trade in the bud. In 1995, there were
armed clashes between farmers and special antinarcotics police who
destroyed around 100,000 plants.

But the past five years have seen fewer than 10 prosecutions and even
fewer real police sweeps. In Fatos' stone cottage, the modern
trappings of the trade have been grafted onto an ancient peasant culture.

A satellite TV dish hangs next to his grandfather's hookah pipe on the
verandah wall, while a Japanese off-road vehicle has supplanted the
donkey cart. ''This village will sell half a million dollars' worth of
grass this year,'' boasts Fatos' mother.

Annual Albanian marijuana revenue is estimated at $ 40
million.

Despite the rewards, though, dope dealing was for a long time just a
sideline in these parts.

Since the dawn of democracy at the start of the 1990s, the Ionian
coastline has been a haven for scams.

The local ports of Vlore and Durres, for example, were home to a
series of pyramid schemes that offered returns as high as 50% a month.

When the supply of fresh cash dried up in early 1997, the schemes
collapsed, leaving almost every local family destitute.

Some 15% of Albania's 3.3 million population fled abroad, mostly to
Italy, ferried by smugglers using powerful motor launches.

Only as the flow of refugees slowed to a trickle did the racketeers
switch cargoes. ''Until then, marijuana had been a problem but a
containable one,'' recalls Albanian Foreign Ministry official Itland
Bicprendi. ''It was just boys filling their rucksacks with grass and
crossing the mountains into Greece.'' FREE ZONE. No longer.

The Italian mafiosi who control distribution are using immigration
loopholes and old smuggling networks to spread their wares all over
Europe. Italy is a signatory to the Schengen Accord, a 1990 treaty
that virtually abolished passport controls within most of the European
Union. Once outsiders manage to pierce the Schengen zone, drug
agencies complain, they, too, can move around nearly unimpeded. ''You
used to find Albanian refugees turning up in Zurich and Amsterdam,''
comments Zef Preci of the Albanian Statistical Office. ''Now it's
Albanian marijuana.''

There are some Albanian optimists who believe that, left to market
forces, at least some dope dealers will soon be looking for a new line
of work. As more landowners switch to the new cash crop, the price has
dropped.

Top-grade Albanian hashish currently sells wholesale at $ 120 to $ 140
per kilo, whereas three years ago, farmers were getting $ 240 to $
360, and in '92 the rate was $ 1,200.

The question is: If Albanian farmers stop growing marijuana, what will
they do instead?

In the aftermath of 1997's civil unrest, Western organizations
suspended grants and loans that would have kept ''legitimate'' farmers
on the straight and narrow.

Now it's too late: Many citrus orchards and olive groves have been
rooted up to make way for more marijuana, and any replacement saplings
would take years to reach maturity.

It looks as if Albania's black-market culture will be around for a
while yet.
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