Doctors in Albania say that hundreds of people have fallen ill from harvesting cannabis in a lawless region that for years has been out of bounds to police, according to media reports on Friday.
A hospital in the southern city of Gjirokaster said a total of 700 people had sought treatment since June for the effects of planting, harvesting, pressing and packing the cannabis in the village of Lazarat.
“In the last two months about seven to eight people arrive in the emergency ward each day and many more have come earlier with disorders from hashish,” Gjirokaster doctor Hysni Lluka told Top Channel television.
About 2 000 people, including poor Roma who have set up a camp near Lazarat, have been working for months in the cannabis fields, where producers pay e8 (R109) for 10 kilograms of processed drug. The illegal practice has flourished in Lazarat over two decades of turbulent transition in Albania since the end of hardline communist rule.
Aerial pictures suggest about 60 hectares have been cultivated in Lazarat with 300 000 cannabis plants, capable of yielding 500 tons or half the total cannabis production in Albania.
Lluka said women and teenagers, who accounted for about 40 percent of those working in Lazarat, had sought help for bouts of vomiting, stomach pain, irregular heart beats and high blood pressure. Last week one patient came in a critical state. – Reuters