Japan’s under-20s are getting high like never before: ‘social morals are dying’
The relaxed attitude towards ‘fashionable’ drugs has been cited as one reason for more young Japanese arrested for cannabis offences
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), 1,373 people under the age of 20 were arrested for cannabis offences in Japan in 2025, an increase of more than a fifth from the previous year.
The figure is the highest since age-specific drug offence data was first collected in 1990, the agency said. By comparison, just 210 people in this age group were arrested in 2016.
The number of high school students detained rose by more than half to 313 last year, while arrests of university and junior high school students climbed to 62 and 28, respectively. The remaining cases involved young people who were employed or unemployed.
The NPA report noted that younger people “tend to be more likely to try cannabis out of curiosity”. But social and cultural observers say deeper issues are also at play.
“The increases that we are seeing in illegal drug consumption among young people are a serious and growing problem,” said Izumi Tsuji, a professor of the sociology of culture at Tokyo’s Chuo University and a member of the Japan Youth Study Group.