A well-organized distribution network is already established, with dozens of youthful dealers ready to supply hundreds of customers. Ben says he's a dealer. He says he makes at least 10 sales of marijuana or hashish a day. Nine months ago, when I started to deal, I only had a few clients. Now I've got loads.
Drugs enter Kosovo from Albania and Macedonia.
While much of the imported marijuana is for local consumption, the more expensive drugs, like cocaine and heroin, only pass through here on their way to Western Europe. International narcotics experts believe the province's drug smugglers are handling up to five tons of heroin a month, more than twice the amount they were trafficking before the war. If this goes on, we are predicting a heroin boom in Western Europe on the same scale as the one in the early '80s. During the war in Kosovo, Albanian drug traffickers abandoned the well-established smuggling route that brought drugs from Afghanistan via Bulgaria, Macedonia and Kosovo to Western Europe. But the end of the fighting, and the absence of robust law enforcement agencies in Kosovo, saw a return of the drug traffic.