A Japanese Ministry of Well being, Labour and Welfare panel met on Could 25 to start discussions concerning lifting the ban on medical hashish to profit sufferers that suffer from refractory epilepsy.
As reported by The Asahi Shimbun, the ministry could revise the present legislation someday this summer time. Japanese legislation at the moment prohibits any possession or cultivation of any a part of hashish, together with “the spikes, leaves, roots and ungrown stalk of the hashish plant.”
The Asahi Shimbun references that of the “Group of Seven,” or the seven nations with probably the most superior economies, which incorporates Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US. Of those, Japan at the moment has one of many strictest approaches to hashish regulation and prohibition. In August 2021, the Japanese ministry wrote a report that beneficial that the federal government ought to take into account following the instance of different nations to permit sufferers to make use of medical hashish.
Whereas the ministry is discussing the addition of a provision to the Hashish Management Regulation that will exclude medical hashish consumption from turning into grounds for punishment, the company additionally seeks to additional criminalize leisure use.
Though hashish is prohibited, there are some Japanese hashish cultivators who’re licensed to supply hemp to create shimenawa, a particular rope that’s generally used at shrines. There are not any punishments for these cultivators, for worry that the manufacturing of the ropes could embrace “unintentionally inhaling substances of marijuana.” Nevertheless, this assumption was disproven when no farmers’s urine checks got here again optimistic for hashish in a survey conducted in 2019.
The Asahi Shimbun writes that some specialists imagine the legislation ought to present remedy choices for “these hooked on marijuana to stop repeat offenses,” which primarily contains Japanese youth.
In December 2021, Japanese gaming firm Capcom allowed the usage of its Ace Lawyer character to curb hashish consumption within the nation’s youth, together with the Osaka Prefectural Police (OPP). Beforehand, Capcom has assisted the OPP with different crime prevention campaigns. “Capcom hopes to help crime prevention actions in Osaka and all of Japan via this program, which is able to see the manufacturing of 6,000 unique posters, in addition to 4,000 unique flyers that will probably be included with individually wrapped face masks,” the corporate stated in a press launch.
Japan has lengthy prohibited hashish underneath the Hashish Management Regulation that initially went into impact in 1948. Traditionally, hashish had its place in Japanese tradition and faith, however from the Fifties onward, Japanese legislation on hashish mirrored that of the United State’s method to prohibition. The Japanese hemp business was nonetheless permitted to function, however on account of costly cultivation licenses and a decline in demand for hemp items, few farms stay.
Whereas the federal government perspective is starting to shift, it’s nonetheless clear that Japan wants extra progress earlier than it will possibly totally embrace hashish legalization. In 1980, former Beatles band member Paul McCartney visited Japan with lower than eight ounces in his possession, which netted him an 11-year ban from returning. In February 2022, a U.S. Marine received two years of hard labor for mail-ordering “a half-gallon of weed-infused liquid and the quarter-pound of hashish” from an unnamed particular person in Nevada. On Could 17, a school nurse was imprisoned for allegedly possessing “an unspecified quantity of dried hashish in two jars and a plastic bag.”
Even when Canada legalized hashish in 2018, the Japanese authorities made a press release reminding Japanese nationals dwelling broad that cannabis is illegal to consume even if they live in a country where it’s legal.
In keeping with Kyodo Information, the Nationwide Police Company launch information that there have been 5,482 people who were caught in violation of Japan’s cannabis law (4,537 for possession, 273 for unlawful gross sales, and 230 for unlawful cultivation).