A huge plume of marijuana smoke is hovering over an Albanian town after a police crackdown on its notorious drug trade.
Heavily armed police were pelted with gunfire, grenades and even mortars as they tried to rid the town of Lazarat, Europe's biggest producer of marijuana, of its main crop, the Associated Press reports.
The hills of the village in the country's south yields around 900 tons of cannabis a year, worth close to $6.5 billion – or nearly half the small country's GDP.
The operation in the village, population 5000, is in its fifth day has seen the destruction of 80,000 plants and more than 12.8 tons of cannabis while 80 houses have been searched.
Residents have reportedly seen the events unfold on live television, burning their own crops as authorities close in.
"What did I do wrong? I just wanted five plants like everybody else," Lumturi Koli, a 42-year-old widower, told Reuters.
"I should have been first to plant them because I have to care for my children."
While thirteen people have been arrested for drug offences and firing on police, miraculously no-one has been killed despite long blasts of gunfire.
Four have been slightly wounded, including two shepherds who were hit by stray rounds.
The raids have been part of an overhaul push by Albania and its new Socialist government to gain entry into the European Union.
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Heavily armed police were pelted with gunfire, grenades and even mortars 
People living in small towns have guns, grenades and mortars? So they really are protecting their plantations!
"What did I do wrong? I just wanted five plants like everybody else," Lumturi Koli, a 42-year-old widower, told Reuters.
"I should have been first to plant them because I have to care for my children."
Sheesh, what happened to using land for growing food crops and keeping goats and chickens?
@siggie-reported-by-alarmists wrote:The Epilepsy Foundation supports the rights of patients and families living with seizures and epilepsy to access physician directed
care, including medical marijuana. Nothing should stand in the way of patients gaining access to potentially life-saving treatment. If a
patient and their healthcare professionals feel that the potential benefits of medical marijuana for uncontrolled epilepsy outweigh the
risks, then families need to have that legal option now -- not in five years or ten years. For people living with severe uncontrolled
epilepsy, time is not on their side. This is a very important, difficult, and personal decision that should be made by a patient and family
working with their healthcare team.
Is there a source for that?
I checked the Epilepsy Foundation website and it says this,
Antiepileptic drugs with other drugs
In addition to being illegal, it is strongly recommended that people with epilepsy refrain from taking recreational drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, amphetamines or marijuana because these drugs can provoke seizures. Even though marijuana has been shown to have anti-seizure properties suited to some forms of epilepsy, the risk of psychosis in young people, its irregular supply, imprecise dosage and varying side-effects – as well as the criminal penalties that apply in some parts of the world for using it – make it problematic. Should you be unable to continue to use such a drug to control your seizures, you are at a significantly increased risk of having breakthrough seizures.
