Cannabis crisis shows Japan

[grace]

Cannabis crisis shows Japan’s drug allergy

Reuters

18 December 2008

Daiy News and Analysis

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1215162

 

TOKYO: First a sumo wrestler, then an actor, now students at elite universities and a tennis player — the list of people caught using marijuana has sparked fears of reefer madness in Japan.

 

Over 2,000 people were arrested on dope charges between January and October this year, a 19% increase on the same period last year, according to the National Police Agency.

 

“(The) increase in marijuana abusers, as well as tightening regulations, are both factors that pushed up the number of arrests,” Shingo Katsuno, vice president and an expert on Japan’s drug issues at Hyogo University of Teacher Education said. “Japan is now highly interested in the issue because it is spreading in places like colleges, where it hardly existed before,” he added.

 

Television stations and newspapers have been running almost daily stories on high profile busts, drug dealers and ordinary people whose lives have allegedly been ruined by pot.

 

But experts point out that surveys suggest reality is a lot different, just one percent of 18-year olds in Japan have ever used marijuana according to a nationwide poll of about 40,000 students in 2006.

 

In fact, the ‘epidemic’ scare stories are more indicative of how much Japan continues to resist the drug, Katsuno said.

 

“No other country is making such a big fuss with some 1%. This shows the strict awareness Japanese society has against drugs,” he said.

 

Comparable surveys of teen marijuana habits in the US and UK found many times the number 42% and 38% of older teens respectively confessing to usage. Anti-narcotics education is drummed into Japan’s school students and little differentiation is made between “hard” and “soft” drugs.

 

The nation’s strict attitude toward illegal substances stems in part to a post World War two amphetamine spike, which saw widespread abuse of the substance after it was sold without a prescription.

 

While legalising marijuana or using it for medical purposes to treat diseases such as cancer and AIDS has been debated and approved in some western countries, such ideas haven’t caught on in Japan.