The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally, and it remains very difficult for local authorities to reduce the rates of drug consumption.
The Medellín Cartel was a powerful and highly organized Colombian drug cartel and terrorist organization originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia, that was founded and led by Pablo Escobar. It is often considered to be the first major "drug cartel" and was referred to as such; due to the organization's upper echelons and overall power-structure being built on a partnership between multiple Colombian traffickers operating alongside Escobar. Included were Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, Fabio Ochoa Vásquez, Juan David Ochoa Vásquez, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Carlos Lehder. Escobar's main partner in the organization however was his cousin Gustavo Gaviria who handled much of the cartel's shipping arrangements and the more general and detailed logistical aspects of the cocaine trafficking routes and international smuggling networks which were supplying at least 80% of the world's cocaine during its peak. Gustavo, also known as León seems to have also had a strong hand in the cartel's unprecedented acts of narcoterrorism, right alongside his cousin Pablo and was considered to be second in command of the cartel and therefore one of Colombia's most wanted men, with both him and Escobar having arrest warrants pending from other nations where their criminal activity had spread to, such as in Spain and the U.S. Meanwhile, Pablo Escobar's brother Roberto Escobar acted as the organization's accountant. The cartel operated from 1976 to 1993 in Colombia (Antioquia), Bolivia, Panama, Central America, Peru, the Bahamas, the United States, as well as in Canada.
The Department of Neutralization of Armed Elements commonly known by its acronym RENEA, is the main Albanian counter-terrorist and critical incident response unit. The force was constituted in the early 1990s in response to the growing crime levels in the country after the fall of communism. RENEA's responsibilities are rescue operations, hostage situations, counter-terrorism and response to particularly violent forms of crime. Since 1990, the unit has lost four men in action and more than forty wounded. Their skills are highly regarded and well thought-of inside Albania and in the West, they are reported to have one of the highest OPTEMPOs in all of Europe and they have been trained by GSG 9.
The Guadalajara Cartel also known as The Federation was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in 1980 by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in order to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States. Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered from the cocaine trade. Throughout the 1980s, the cartel controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border. It had operations in various regions in Mexico which included the states of Jalisco, Baja California, Colima, Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa among others. Multiple modern present day drug cartels such as the Tijuana, Juárez and Sinaloa cartels originally started out as branches or "plazas" of the Guadalajara Cartel before its eventual disintegration.
In 1997, widespread civil unrest struck Albania due to economic problems in the country, that were caused by the collapse of pyramid schemes. Due to the large quantities of money robbed from the government to fund the schemes, the Democratic Party's government collapsed in January 1997. More than 2,000 people were killed in the conflict until its end in August 1997. The creation of a new government came as the revolutionaries surrounded Tirana. Various other sources also describe the violence that ensued as a rebellion or even a civil war.
Operation Tijuana or Operation Baja California of the Government of Mexico is taking place in Tijuana and the surrounding areas of Baja California and Baja California Sur. This operation is part of the Joint Operation Against Drug Trafficking.
The Macedonian mafia is a body of illegal gangs and criminal organizations operating in North Macedonia and within the Macedonian diaspora.
Operation Michoacán is a joint operation by Federal Police and the Mexican military to eliminate drug plantations and to combat drug trafficking. Initiated on December 11, 2006, the operation was supervised by The Secretary of Public Safety, Attorney General of Mexico, Secretary of the Interior, Mexican Navy and Mexican Army.
The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.
Lazarat is a village in Gjirokastër County, in southern Albania. It is located in the Dropull valley. Formerly functioning as a municipality, as part of the 2015 local government reform, it became a subdivision of the municipality of Gjirokastër. The former municipality consisted of the villages Lazarat and Kordhocë.
Joint Operation Nuevo León-Tamaulipas is an anti-drug joint operation in two Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León by Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces. The objective of the joint operation is to eliminate Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel operations in the area. So far, many cartel members have been either killed or arrested. Recently Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel have broken relations and started fighting each other.
Coordinated Operation Chihuahua or formerly known as Joint Operation Chihuahua is a Military and Federal Police operation started in 2008 by the Mexican Army and Policía Federal Preventiva. The objective is to "besiege" Ciudad Juárez to concentrate forces and saturate the area to confront the three cartels already operating in the city. Ciudad Juárez is known to be one of the most dangerous cities in the Americas. In the year 2007 more than 100 police officers were killed in Juárez in attacks blamed on organized crime. As a result of drug cartel violence, President Felipe Calderón has previously launched other Joint Operations in other states.
Operation Sinaloa or Operation Culiacan - Navolato is an ongoing anti-drug trafficking operation in the Mexican state of Sinaloa by the Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces. Its main objective is to cripple all cartel organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel, Beltrán-Leyva Cartel and Los Zetas that operate in that state. The Military was deployed in response to the murder of Mexico's Federal Police commissioner Édgar Eusebio Millán Gómez.
Timeline of Mexican Naval anti-drug cartel operations during the Mexican drug war are listed below:
Organized crime in the Netherlands, sometimes called penose is the organised criminal underbelly in Amsterdam and other major cities. Penose usually means the organizations formed by criminals of Dutch descent. It is a slang word coming from the old Amsterdam Bargoens language.
Saimir Tahiri is an Albanian politician, who served as the Minister of Interior Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama from 2013 to 2017.
On 9 February 2015, hooded gunmen in the French city of Marseille sparked a lockdown after they fired Kalashnikov rifles at police officers while Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister, was visiting the city. It is thought that the shooting was gang-related, but due to the recent Charlie Hebdo shooting and the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis during the 2015 Île-de-France attacks, the entire troubled Marseille suburb of La Castellane was under lockdown for hours. No one was injured.
On December 14, 1998, the Yugoslav Army (VJ) ambushed a group of 140 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants attempting to smuggle weapons and supplies from their base in Albania into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A five-hour battle ensued, ending with the deaths of 36 militants and the capture of a further nine. Dozens more fled back to Albania, abandoning large quantities of weapons and supplies, which the Yugoslav authorities subsequently seized. The ambush was the most serious war-related incident in Kosovo since a U.S.-negotiated truce took effect two months before. It came on the heels of increasing tensions in the province, where inter-ethnic violence had been escalating steadily since early 1995.
Cannabis is legal for medical and industrial purposes in Albania.
Albanian government 
