<p><strong>Until recently,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I used to be piqued (with a certain medication) by over-the-counter drugs usually sold at the pharmacy. Now it&#8217;s even worse.</strong></p>
<p> Tomoya (pseudonym, 18), a Tohyoko kid, says so.</p>
<figure id="attachment_313871" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-313871" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="1d5713d2"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2023/05/6ac2397867767a902ce2217f0a58282f.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-313871" class="wp-caption-text"> Kids being rushed to the police after overdosing (image from Twitter).</figcaption></figure>
<p> Since the summer of 2009, when the Tohyoko Kids first came to the attention of the media, OD (overdose) among the kids has been a common occurrence. Recently, however, dangerous behavior that cannot be dismissed as child&#8217;s play has become more noticeable.</p>
<p><strong> When over-the-counter cold medicines stopped working, the next thing they started taking was prescription drugs, which are given at the hospital. These include strong cough medicines, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills. What is popular is &#8216;Cyrace Strawberry Milk,&#8217; which is an insomnia drug called Cyrace dissolved in strawberry milk,&#8221; says Tomoya.</strong></p>
<p> (Tomoya) &#8220;Strawberry milk with Cyrace dissolved in it turns blue, and it seems to be considered a kind of &#8220;sickly&#8221; milk, judging from the abundance of kids posting pictures of their mouths turning blue after drinking it on social networking sites.</p>
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<p><strong> OD is something that once you do it, you get addicted to it. It&#8217;s like a habit of cracking up. You can forget about things you don&#8217;t like, and there&#8217;s a sense of solidarity with your friends, like you&#8217;re doing something stupid. I enjoy tweeting about it on social media, and sometimes my friends brag about how many pills they&#8217;ve taken.</strong></p>
<p> In May 2009, two teenagers, a man and a woman, jumped from the upper floor of the APA Hotel in Kabukicho and committed suicide, which also reportedly occurred after ODing. Recently, however, the situation has become even more dangerous from there. A former member of the volunteer group &#8220;Kabukicho Manjikai&#8221; said.</p>
<p><strong> When there were adults like Howl, who was the president of Manjikai and was a &#8216;drug averse&#8217; person, there were no illegal drugs in the market even though there were ODs. But after Howl was arrested last June and Manjikai ceased to exist, the number of &#8216;bad adults&#8217; targeting kids increased and security deteriorated dramatically.</strong></p>
<p> There was an incident that illustrates this.</p>
<p> On May 17, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department announced the arrest of four men, including a gang member, for assaulting a tohyoko kid, locking her in the trunk of a car, and robbing her mother of 200,000 yen in ransom money. The men are believed to have been using the kids to sell marijuana and methamphetamine, and were in trouble over the proceeds.</p>
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<p><strong> There is no doubt that the yakuza and semi-gres are getting into the area. They are using kids to be dealers. It&#8217;s easy to get illegal drugs in Kabukicho now. You can talk to a guy standing around and he will sell you drugs, or you can easily get to know a dealer by searching for &#8220;hand-pushers&#8221; in a specific area on social networking sites. Teppo&#8217; is a cloaked term for meeting dealers in person and dealing drugs with them.</strong></p>
<p> Tohyoko has been reported in the press as &#8220;a place where minors who have no place to stay gather. On the other hand, it can be said that by attracting attention, it has also attracted &#8220;malicious adults who try to make money from minors. Of course, OD itself is not a permissible act, but when illegal drugs such as marijuana and methamphetamine enter the picture, there is no more time to spare. We can only hope that the arrests will lead to more arrests.</p>
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<p> Sasaki Chihuahua <br>
Born in Tokyo in 2000. After attending an integrated school in Tokyo from elementary school to high school, he went on to Keio University, where he has been living in Kabukicho since he was 15 years old and has a wide range of personal connections. At university, he is studying the sociology of the downtown area, including Kabukicho. His <a href="https://amzn.to/370KOi8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">book, &#8220;Pien&#8221; to shakai&#8221; (&#8220;The Disease of &#8216;Pien&#8217;: Consumption and Approval of the SNS Generation&#8221;)</a>, is now on sale.</p>
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<div> From the June 9, 2023 issue of FRIDAY</div>


 Sasaki Chihuahua

 Since the summer of 2009, when the existence of "Toyoko Kids" began to be reported in the media, drug overdose has been a popular activity in Kabukicho. In recent years, dangerous behavior that cannot be dismissed as child's play has become more noticeable.

Dissolving insomnia medicine in strawberry milk… “Bad adults” are active in the dark, illegal drugs are spreading in Toyoko

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