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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Japan: Cannabis cases up 19.3% in 2015
Japan Today Friday 11 Mar 2016 Police questioned, arrested or referred to prosecutors 2,101 people for cannabis use, possession or sale in 2015, up 19.3% from the previous year, the National Police Agency said Thursday. People in their 20s were most frequently involved with the drug, relative to their share of the total population, police data showed. First-time offenders accounted for 76.8% of the total. According to the NPA, of the total of 13,524 people involved in drug cases during the year, 11,022 were for stimulants, with cannabis in second place. Police handled cannabis cases involving 24 high school students and three middle school students, including that of a third-year high school student arrested in September for dealing on school grounds. The youngest offenders were a boy and a girl both aged 14. Children younger than 14 cannot be charged under the law, but a Kyoto boy in his final year of elementary school was reported to a child counseling center last year after admitting to having used cannabis. “It is a misconception that cannabis has less addictive properties,” an NPA official said. In a category of formerly legal substances with hallucinatory and stimulant properties, labeled by Japanese authorities as “dangerous drugs,” 1,196 people were investigated in 2015, up 42.4% from the year prior, but some 55.9% of these were first picked up on before 2015. Cases rapidly dropped off after July last year, when retail sale of the substances was completely shut down. The number of deaths linked to the drugs plunged to 11 from 112 the year prior. While some users of the controlled substances have turned to covertly acquiring them over the Internet, others are thought to have replaced them with cannabis, the NPA said. The NPA said groups smuggling stimulants into Japan turned to more diverse and sophisticated methods in 2015 following a tightening of border controls, resulting in police detection of stimulant smuggling falling sharply. Both the number of smuggling cases and number of people investigated declined by around half from the year prior, while the total haul seized by police fell 11.9 percent to 394.70 kilograms. According to the NPA, street prices for stimulants have been gradually falling since 2009, suggesting supply is remaining steady. http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/cannabis-cases-up-19-3-in-2015
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