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Over ten months in 2023–2024, Albania’s State Police opened criminal proceedings against 2,300 people for drug trafficking, while experts warn of rising drug use and trafficking in the country.
Artiel Çikopana was stopped by police on Tuesday, October 17, 2023, while riding in a car near Raqi Qirinxhi High School in Korçë. The 30-year-old was among the first people police arrested in the operation they named “Tempulli” (Temple) in mid-2023.
Seeking to prevent drugs from reaching schools, police have detained and opened criminal proceedings against 2,300 people for drug trafficking, including minors.
Statistics, experts and international reports point to rising drug use in Albania, particularly among minors.
Experts warn that Albania has also become a drug-consuming country, while the statistics indicate that criminal groups have extensive distribution networks across the country.
The latest World Health Organization report on adolescent use of illicit substances shows that the share of minors in Albania who say they have tried cannabis at least once rose from 7% in 2015 to 11% in 2022.
The rising figures for drug use and trade appear to have prompted the State Police operations. At no fewer than four press conferences, police chiefs have announced action against 30 criminal groups.
Experts say the authorities should go beyond criminal proceedings and coordinate punitive measures with awareness-raising, education and support, giving young people and minors a way out of both drug use and involvement in crime.
Minors as traffickers’ “prey”
Artiel had recently returned from living abroad when, on Tuesday, October 17, 2023, he was riding with friends in a car near Raqi Qirinxhi High School in Korçë.
As he got out of the car, a police patrol called on him to stop. Frightened, the 30-year-old tried to get away but failed.
During the search, police found a plastic wrapping containing 1.2 grams of cannabis and a set of keys that opened a small storage space beside the building’s elevator. Inside, they found a solid block of cocaine weighing 41.6 grams and two further bags containing 87.8 grams of cannabis.
Police announced his arrest as part of Operation Tempulli. Prosecutors suspect that the 30-year-old was distributing drugs near Raqi Qirinxhi High School.
The documents show that Artiel had a previous police record. His statement that he was a drug user had kept him out of prison on November 18, 2022. He now faces a drug-trafficking charge, and if he is proven to be a repeat offender, the Criminal Code provides for imprisonment “from seven to fifteen years”.
Prosecutors have also requested that Sterjo Gërmenji, who was accompanying Artiel in the car at the time of his arrest, stand trial for “failure to report a crime”.
The two young men from Korçë are among the more than 2,300 people against whom Albanian police opened criminal proceedings between September 2023 and July 2024 for selling drugs near schools and other establishments as part of the Tempulli operations.
SHTEG asked the State Police for complete data on the operations but had received no response by the time this article was published.
In September 2023, police said they had opened proceedings against 1,541 people in the first phase of Operation Tempulli. In January 2024, proceedings were opened against another 299 people, followed by a further 44 in May and July.
In these reports, police said they had targeted 30 criminal groups and seized more than 1,500 kg of drugs. Around 1,400 kg was cannabis; the remainder was cocaine, heroin and ecstasy.
SHTEG reviewed all police reports published over at least eight months. By May 2024, these reported a further 388 people facing proceedings, mainly for possession or trafficking of small quantities of drugs. They included girls and minors.
Alongside official police reports, studies by Albania’s Institute of Statistics confirm the sharp rise in drug-related crime. In 2019, these offenses accounted for 5.6% of all recorded criminal activity (1,989 of 35,210 offenses). In 2023, the figures put the share at around 9% (3,046 of 33,845).
Those facing proceedings included people arrested with small quantities of drugs or who described themselves as users. Albanian law exempts the user from criminal prosecution. Amendments to the Criminal Code in 2016 introduced the exception for “personal use and in small doses” from criminal or administrative liability.
Despite this, police and prosecutors continue to bring them before the courts because the legislation does not specify what quantity constitutes a dose for personal use.
The data show that, for eight years, people convicted of drug offenses have made up the largest group of prisoners. Although courts often order conditional release for people facing proceedings for drug distribution, around 30% of the country’s 5,169 prisoners are serving sentences for dealing in drugs.
Police operations and the justice system’s punitive measures have not curbed drug cultivation and trafficking.
After two police operations in 2014–2015 removed Lazarat from the map of drug cultivation, the statistics show that cannabis cultivation would spread throughout the country.
Aerial surveys by Italy’s Guardia di Finanza reported more than 213 hectares of suspected cannabis plantations in 2016. Police operations that year were among the largest, with around 2.5 million plants destroyed.
Guardia di Finanza flights detected only 28.5% of the plants (25,719 of 90,175) destroyed by Albanian police in 2019. In the pandemic year, former police chief Ardi Veliu acknowledged that cultivation had shifted to forests and remote mountain areas.
Police reported destroying 710,953 cannabis sativa plants in 2020–2023. Former police chief Gledis Nano described so-called “grow houses” as a concern. In 2022, he said that “nobody is seeing them” and sought the help of the Electricity Distribution Operator to detect and combat this new method of cultivation.
The challenges
For experts, the continuing police operations, the rising number of people facing criminal proceedings over the past four years and the spread of plantations to areas far from the former center in Lazarat indicate that Albania faces a new challenge: drug trafficking is reaching ever deeper into the country’s social and economic structures.
Experts are also concerned by the rise in drug use among minors.
“The figures from police operations resemble the findings of WHO surveys, which showed that in 2022 more minors in Albania had tried cannabis than in 2015,” sociologist Alisa Peçi tells SHTEG.
According to the sociologist, the rise in drug use among minors has been caused by “the lack of sustained checks to combat drug sales near schools”. For Eugen Beci, a former Serious Crimes prosecutor, the principal factor is that
“Albania remains a producer of soft drugs, and Albanian traffickers are gaining a greater role in the transit of hard drugs toward Europe”.
“Police and law-enforcement agencies should carry out genuine investigative operations to target not only small-scale dealers but also the traffickers and organizers of this activity,” said Beci, who is now a lawyer.
In his view, this phenomenon cannot be fought by police alone. “If the family gets involved, if the school rises to the task, if society ‘does not sleep’, then the results will be much better,” Beci continues.
Peçi nevertheless hopes that the police operations can at least prevent or reduce direct contact with minors, discouraging their involvement in trafficking or drug use.
“Prevention is always better than cure, so I consider the educational role of the family, followed by the school, other institutions and the media, to be very important, both in educating young people and in creating inspiring examples that can offer adolescents alternatives, so they do not fall prey to criminal groups and the vicious circle of drug use,” sociologist Alisa Peçi suggested.
*Version revised by the author. Originally reported and published for Shteg.org, a project of the Network for Reporting on Corruption and Organized Crime in Albania. Republication rights belong exclusively to the author and “RRKOKSH”.
* Eugen Beci’s quotation about family involvement and the role of schools was corrected following the author’s confirmation on October 8, 2026.
* Correction, October 10, 2026: The name has been standardized as Artiel Çikopana, following the author’s manuscript. The opening now specifies that police stopped him on October 17, 2023; the formal arrest is recorded on October 18. Gledis Nano’s remarks date to February 23, 2022, and the quotation about cannabis laboratories reads “nobody is seeing them.” The sum of the reported figures for plants destroyed in 2020–2023 has been corrected from 710,943 to 710,953.