Casting aside decades of distaste for wacky weed, Japan's now going to pot, according to Weekly Playboy (11/11). For years the average Japanese couldn't give a hoot about hooch, but the number of arrests involving cannabis has been growing steadily since the '90s.

"One trend evident recently has been the decrease in the ratio of those busted for possession for those arrested for cultivation," a Mary Jane trade insider tells Weekly Playboy, implying the newly evolved marijuana problem is homegrown rather than imported.

An expert on the cannabis situation in Japan agrees.

"What, with terrorist attacks and SARS, airport customs officials have become really strict over the past one to two years. Seizures of 10 kilograms or more aren't as rare as they used to be," the expert says. "Naturally, with supply levels down, the number of people growing their own dope has increased. You can buy seeds really easily over the Internet and most hardware stores have all you need to make a cultivation kit."

In brand conscious Japan, a grass grower says that deluxe dope with names such as White Widow and AK-47 are hot. The expert agrees.

"In the Netherlands, a marijuana superpower, there're all sorts of improvements being made to cannabis strains, and they even have factories for cultivation. The plants with a particularly strong effect are designated as brands," the expert tells Weekly Playboy, adding that top grade pot can be pricey. "You're looking at about 8,000 yen per gram for enough leaf to have three or four smokes. Head shops will sell 10 seeds for 28,000 yen. You can get about 100 grams out of one fully grown plant."

Simple math shows that growing your own can be fairly lucrative, but few cultivators actually do so in Japan.

"It's a tough job to produce something of commercial quality, requiring a lot of know-how and effort controlling such matters as temperature control and fertilization. And it takes at least three months before you can harvest it. That's why most growers end up buying their own stash," the expert says.

Nonetheless, moves are afoot to plant the seeds of a cannabis industry in Japan, with the underworld apparently heavily involved.

"There're yakuza out there who're keen on large-scale marijuana production," the expert says, "and others who're more interested in developing a Japanese designer cannabis."

Perhaps a customs crackdown is the wrong way to go about trying to catch cannabis cultivators in Japan.

"For the types of quantities the yakuza are looking at, the small amount secured from individual growers simply won't be anywhere near enough. They'd need some huge space where they could grow it, like a factory or a field," the marijuana business insider tells Weekly Playboy. "Of course, if they were that open about it, they'd end up arrested. Their only option is to head off into the mountains and grow the dope somewhere there."

October 28, 2003