American woman allegedly smuggled drugs for free trip to Japan

Tokyo police arrested two American women for allegedly smuggling $1 million worth of cannabis into the country, with one suspect claiming she was motivated by a free trip to Japan, an official and media reports said Friday.

The pair, both 25, arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda airport from New York last Saturday with two suitcases in which “cannabis-like dried plants were secretly stored,” a police spokesman told AFP.

Nippon TV aired images of the drug seizure, showing more than a dozen packages containing the alleged cannabis.

Japan has some of the world’s strictest drug laws and smuggling or possession of illegal narcotics can result in a lengthy jail term.

The dried cannabis weighed around 30 kilograms (66 pounds) and is valued at about 150 million yen ($970,000), media reported.

One of the women told police she took the job for the money and because, “I was attracted by the fact I could go to Japan for free,” Nippon TV reported.

The other suspect denies the allegation, telling police she “didn’t know that cannabis was inside” the suitcase, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, citing unnamed police sources.

The women “conspired with someone else whose name is unknown,” the police spokesman told AFP. They claimed they received instructions from a man they met on social media but never met in person, according to local media.

The pair were arrested “on suspicion of violating the drugs and psychotropics control law, or, smuggling to gain profit,” the spokesman said.

They also breached two other unnamed laws, he added.

Smuggling cannabis for the purpose of making profit carries up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 3 million yen ($19,500).

Last December, prominent American playwright Jeremy O. Harris was arrested in Japan on suspicion of smuggling the psychedelic drug ecstasy. He was released three weeks later.