Is Japan becoming a 'drug heaven?'

“With so many people buying drugs, is Japan’s future secure?” It’s the sort of complaint you hear from time to time, but the speaker is no bastion of the established order; he’s an alleged pusher, one of four, including a 42-year-old Iranian, arrested in July.

Japan, says Friday (Nov 21), is becoming “drug heaven.” To users, drugs are innocent fun, like alcohol or cigarettes. To law enforcers, they represent moral breakdown. Forty years on from the freewheeling ’60s, the conflict has yet to be resolved.

What alarms Friday is the spread of marijuana and stimulants beyond the club scene to college campuses and suburbia. In October, Kanagawa police arrested two Keio University students. It was the tip of the proverbial iceberg. “People toke up openly on campus,” the magazine hears from one Keio student. “It’s not just a matter of five or 10 people.”

Since 2003, no fewer than six Keio people have been arrested on drug charges—one of them an American English instructor. The latest arrests prompted the university to hold a press conference, where three of its top administrators bowed their heads in apology.

In September, a fourth-year Doshisha University student was detained for alleged possession of 3 grams of marijuana. She reportedly told police she had smoked some 250 times: “Smoking with my friends feels so good, I just couldn’t stop.”

A club employee in Roppongi seems to confirm Friday’s worst fears. “Lately, it’s not unusual to see college students toking up. Smoking marijuana at clubs and at raves is just everyday stuff now.”

Police statistics tell the same tale. Last year nationwide, there were 3,282 arrests for alleged marijuana use, a record which the current year looks set to break. Some 70% of those arrested are in their teens and 20s.

“One gram of marijuana costs about 6,000 yen,” a police source tells Friday. “It’s easy for young people to get. And marijuana is likely to be a kind of gateway to the use of other drugs.”

Marijuana for students, stimulants for housewives and office workers—that seems to be the developing trend, Friday says. At one time, the hub of the drug traffic was entertainment quarters like Kabukicho, but security cameras installed there as part of a metropolitan crime-fighting campaign had the predictable effect of scattering the trade to the suburbs. Groups of Iranian sellers are rife, the magazine claims, in prosperous Tokyo neighborhoods like Shirogane and Takanawa. They operate more or less openly. How’s business? One seller can reportedly make 70 sales a day, for an annual income of 200 million yen.

“Many of the sellers handling stimulants and other narcotics are Iranian,” says an investigator. “Many of them here illegally.”

The stuff they sell used to come primarily from China, but a crackdown there stimulated the forging of fresh procurement connections in Europe and Canada. It’s a hydra-headed commerce. A crackdown here shifts the problem there, for a while, but an inexhaustible demand seems to fuel an inexhaustible supply, and the authorities of today seem no closer to stamping it out than the authorities of 40 years ago.

Latest 15 of 48 Total Comments Show All

boboh at 04:29 PM JST - 15th November

Oh, yeah, right, marijuana is contributing to the decay of the social fabric of Japan, sure. Cos it was such a stronghold of ethical morality before, wasn`t it? Easy access to child porn, chikan on trains, collusion between gov and business, price fixing between companies, bullying at every level of the society, DV, one party rule for most of the last 60 years, rampant consumerism, the rape of the environment, the concreting of the coast, cheating husbands, cheating wives, corrupt and incompetent police, a media in collusion with goverment and business fat cats.

Oh, yeah, marijuana is the major contributor to the breakdown of the fabric of Japanese society ;p

P.S. all the media attention is a con by the media to distract the public from bigger issues.
boboh at 04:30 PM JST - 15th November

oh, and make the fat, lazy, incompetent cops look busy.
presto345 at 07:04 PM JST - 15th November

Of course not. What nonsense. Marijuana is a soft drug and much less addictive than alcohol, which does not imply that the government should not impose limits on its usage. What is taking place here now is the same as what happened in the west in the 1960s. No big deal. Condone some of the action, and you keep the thugs, mafia, yakuza and underworld at bay.
as_the_crow_flies at 10:02 PM JST - 15th November

Condone some of the action, and you keep the thugs, mafia, yakuza and underworld at bay.

Sounds more like they are picking on a few cases here and there, insinuating the whole thing is run by illegal Iranians, and nary a whisper of thugs, mafia, yakuza, underworld. The wheels keep getting oiled and the odd scapegoat gets named and shamed, and the yakuza gets to rotate their foreign front people at regular intervals. Stops corruption and people building their own turves or trying to go independent.
medievaltimes at 01:32 AM JST - 16th November

Oh, yeah, right, marijuana is contributing to the decay of the social fabric of Japan, sure. Cos it was such a stronghold of ethical morality before, wasn`t it? Easy access to child porn, chikan on trains, collusion between gov and business, price fixing between companies, bullying at every level of the society, DV, one party rule for most of the last 60 years, rampant consumerism, the rape of the environment, the concreting of the coast, cheating husbands, cheating wives, corrupt and incompetent police, a media in collusion with goverment and business fat cats.

Oh, yeah, marijuana is the major contributor to the breakdown of the fabric of Japanese society ;p

Best post I've seen in a while.
76waystofly at 12:33 PM JST - 16th November

Yeah, four marijuana vending machines for every person...
rurika at 01:32 AM JST - 17th November

The main points I got from this article: the american instructor, the iranian dealers, the drugs from China. Evil foreigners corrupting innocent Japanese youth.
rurika at 02:14 AM JST - 17th November

It's also quite ironic to read this after all the drunk drivers stories... maybe Japan needs to worry more about the drugs that are widespread: alcohol and tobacco.
piroz121 at 02:40 AM JST - 17th November

I imagine right wing elements will try to capitalize on this issue claiming foreigners are to blame.
wargalley20011 at 06:23 AM JST - 17th November

Based upon a Japanese magazine article? That was one of the reasons listed for Mainichi online restructure. Better be careful J.T.
tatsumi at 03:16 PM JST - 18th November

To solve this problems is to establish new strong restricted-low. One of the reason why it is so easy to get these sort of drugs is because of weak low. It's illegal to have hemp but not illegal to have SEED of them. It is very nonsense. The low should've been changed earlier.
TokyoXtreme at 08:57 PM JST - 18th November

Perhaps attention should be shifted to the STAGGERING amount of annual suicides in Japan every year, rather than worrying about imaginary and theoretical damage from drugs. It must also be said that for pharmaceutical companies, Japan definitely IS a drug heaven. The companies are making SKYRILLIONS of dollars/yen from all the Japanese drug users.
Kameleon at 02:14 PM JST - 19th November

Well England, America and many other countries with drug-cultures seem to be alright, they haven't broken down yet:)

This is typical Japanese paranoia, nothing else.

Alchohol gets people hospitalized and killed, yet it is still legal in Japan. Cigarettes get people hospitalized and killed and they too, are legal in Japan.

I think these people need to open their eyes to reality, rather than possibility.
dpurcell84 at 09:02 AM JST - 20th November

Drugs are very damaging to society in general, and I don't think you can point me to any honest, long term study on the subject that suggests otherwise. Remember the Opium wars with China? Drugs, including and perhaps most importantly, cannabis, can cause irreversible brain damage. Effecting social interaction, new memory retention and a number of other factors that are important for any productive member of society. One noted Psychologist pointed out that Cannibas use was like playing, "Russian roulette" with your brain.

The cost of lost productivity and the increased dependence of those who habitually use drugs, especially from those who start young, to society is greater then the cost of working to suppress drug-use among a population.

So what is my point? I am not out trying to say how evil and how damaging marijuana is. I know many former and some current users of the drug. I interacted with, on a professional basis, one of the top Medical Marijuana Attorneys in Seattle, and they (him and his office staff) were very bright and intelligent people. I think both sides of the issue tend to overreact and overstate their arguments

On the one side you have the, "drugs are bad, drugs are from the devil and they are the root cause of all evil"

On the other side you have "bro--------------...." OK just joking, "drugs are completely harmless! They do no damage, it costs more to fight, just make them legal, everyone will be responsible! We need to find a middle ground, I am vehemently apposed to the use of drugs by the underage and I think anyone caught selling drugs to grade-school junior high, or high school should spend the rest of their miserable and despicable lives hunting for mine fields in third world countries so school children don't accidentally step on them.

For adults? It's their choice, maybe a fine to get the money they made without reporting the taxes?

My solution? that would take an article in itself, but basically get people off drugs in a calm, effective way that focuses on those who use the drugs us much or more so then on those that sell them. Get rid of the demand and the supply wont bother.
MANDUDE at 12:26 PM JST - 20th November

Always blame it on the "foreign" criminals- total BS its all controlled by the yakuza