In the mountain valley above North Macedonia’s Lake Ohrid, eagles glide on the thermals against a clear blue sky. The air is crisp and alpine-clear. But beside a bumpy road flanked by densely forested hills, a pungent smell fills the air — the citric aroma of high-grade cannabis flowers.
These rural hills in the former Yugoslavia, and on the Greek side of the border to the south, hide a nascent European heartland for the cultivation of legal marijuana. After boom followed bust for the cannabis industry during the waves of legalisation in North America and Europe, there are hopes among brave investors that the region may form the basis of a sustainable business.
In a series of laboratory-clean greenhouses behind high barbed-wire fences at Ohrid