The proximity to major European drug markets, connections between Albanian and organized crime elements from Italy, Turkey, and parts of the former Yugoslavia, are further facilitating the growth of the drug trade in Albania. Nevertheless, authorities have not discovered any drug operations since the breakup of a heroin laboratory on the Greek border in 1993. Farmers and other landowners, now freed from the collectivist agrarian economy of the past, are increasingly turning to marijuana and opium poppy as cash crops, according to Albanian officials. Moreover, cultivation is spreading from traditional growing areas in the South, and seeds are now imported from Greece and Italy. The extent of such cultivation, however, is unknown.
Albanian authorities report cases of money laundering, despite the poorly developed banking system.
Enforcement efforts and prosecution are hampered by the lack of legislation, and by a corrupt and inexperienced judiciary. The GOA formed a committee to address the drug problems, but there are no reports on its accomplishments. A new penal code that went into effect in mid-1995 specifies penalties for the production, cultivation, and sale of narcotics, but lacks the tools to bolster enforcement operations, such as controlled deliveries and undercover operations. The country's legal and judicial structures have failed to keep pace with the new challenges posed by organized crime in areas such as money laundering. Efforts to interdict drugs remain limited by the lack of personnel and paucity of other resources, although law enforcement authorities claim to have manually eradicated 60,000 marijuana plants in 1995.