Kyoto schoolgirl arrested after failing drug test for marijuana use

Says she began smoking to help her sleep after feeling stressed from family life.

Kyoto has a reputation as a cultured city of reserved and polite behavior, but on March 1, the parents of a 15-year-old girl living in the city’s Fushimi Ward became worried when their daughter became agitated and violent. They called 119, the number for emergency services in Japan, and the responders took the girl, a third-year middle-schooler, to the hospital to be examined.

Included in the examination was a urine test, and when the results came back, the girl had tested positive for marijuana and other controlled substances. Upon receiving the news, the mother searched her daughter’s room, where she found seven grams (0.25 ounces) of dried cannabis as well as two tablets of MDMA, the scientific designation for ecstasy.

When questioned by the police, the girl admitted to having purchased and used marijuana multiple times. “I’d been feeling stressed and couldn’t sleep,” she said, citing family problems as a reason for her unease, “and I read on the Internet that smoking marijuana can help you sleep well, so I got interested in it. I met up with people who I’d met on the Internet and bought it from them,” she went on, saying that she began smoking marijuana in late January.

Japan has very strict drug laws, and not only for substances like cocaine. The softening of restrictions on marijuana use/possession that’s occurred in many other countries has not taken place in Japan, and the girl, despite being still a minor, has been placed under arrest on suspicion of violating the Cannabis Control Law, and the police have now launched an investigation with the goal of identifying and prosecuting the online acquaintances who sold the drugs to the girl.

Sources: FNN Prime via Hachima Kiko, Yahoo! Japan News/Kyoto Shimbun, NHK News Web
Top image: Pakutaso
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