The following news was reported in Japan today.
A number of people have complained of ill health after eating so-called “cannabis gummies”, and the police have raided manufacturing companies.
The four locations searched on suspicion of breaching the Narcotics Control Act included a manufacturing company and a factory in Osaka City, where the products sold were suspected of containing illegal ingredients regulated as designated drugs.
The police plan to seize marijuana gummies and other products and investigate whether any other products containing illegal ingredients were sold.
In Japan, marijuana is so heavily regulated that ‘legal’ chemical products are distributed as an alternative. After a particular synthetic ingredient causes widespread health damage and becomes a social problem, the regulator bans it. The weasel words are repeated endlessly.
Recently, HHCH became a social problem last year. Sellers marketed HHCH-infused gummies as ‘marijuana gummies’. Many people who ate them were taken to hospital by ambulance.
The sellers said. ‘We didn’t do anything illegal’, which certainly may not have been illegal at the time. But the mentality that they are willing to harm the health of others for their own benefit is, in my opinion, criminal.