Former Yakuza VTuber Taro talks about the drug situation in the Gokudo
Methamphetamine is one of the yakuza’s businesses. In movies and manga, yakuza use methamphetamine in a variety of ways, but what is the real story?
The “Jogantaro,” a virtual youtuber (VTuber) who has been in prison several times and is a former yakuza himself, talks about the yakuza’s drug use.
In the prewar days, you didn’t have to be a yakuza to buy methamphetamine. Many of you may have heard the word “Hiropon” in history classes. After the war, it became regulated, and the yakuza took advantage of that.”
Methamphetamines are said to have been used to relieve fatigue and help people concentrate on important matters. The yakuza also used methamphetamine to concentrate for a long time at their gambling parlors, but after the war, it became difficult to manufacture it domestically, so the yakuza smuggled it in from overseas and began to sell it illegally.
Yakuzas in Kyushu smuggled the product in kilograms from overseas and began selling it in so-called one-packets of about 0.3 g. The market price for one-packets was 10,000 yen. The market price for a one-packet is around 10,000 yen, so they make a lot of money. Especially with celebrities, they were often willing to buy them at the asking price, so they were good customers (laughs). But when they got caught, they would tell you everything, so it was a high-risk, high-return proposition.”
The yakuza sell methamphetamine not only because it can be sold at a high price even in fairly small quantities, but also because it is a chemical product and because it is difficult to get caught.
Drugs of natural origin, such as marijuana, lose much of their quality after a few months. Methamphetamine can be stored for a long time, and even if it is handled roughly, the quality is not affected, so it is easy to manage. Moreover, unlike violent crimes, even if you are arrested for selling methamphetamine, you are unlikely to cause trouble for your bosses, so it is a perfect job for low-level yakuza.
Although methamphetamine sales are a good thing for low-level yakuza, they have fallen out of favor with recent yakuza.
Young yakuza nowadays think it is lame to use illegal drugs such as methamphetamine,” he said. They don’t like the strange behavior of using drugs, which is called “yoreru. Many of the odd behaviors when using drugs are really bad. They also don’t like the other things you do, like changing your body odor.”
We can only hope that the trend of using illegal drugs such as methamphetamine will spread and that people will stop using them.
