How 1990s Tech Transformed Iranian Drug Sales: From Streets to Online

Former narcotics officer of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Ryoji Takahama (77). He is a “living witness of history” who played a leading role in drug crime investigations from the Showa to Heisei eras. Takahama recounts the realities of the field, including the drug situation and transaction practices of the time.

The Rise of Iranians in the 1990s

In the Heisei era, drug trafficking crimes committed by non-resident foreign nationals began to increase. Initially, it was Filipinos, but Iranians joined in, and from 1994 (Heisei 6) onward, organized drug trafficking by Iranians became particularly noticeable.

The locations for these sales included Dogenzaka in Shibuya, Tokyo, the area beneath the TV Tower in Nagoya, and America Village in Osaka. They indiscriminately approached young people, including minors who gathered in these areas, to sell drugs. The substances handled by Iranians ranged widely, including stimulants, which were the mainstream drugs at the time, as well as heroin, cocaine, LSD, marijuana, cannabis resin, opium, and even psychotropic drugs like sleeping pills prescribed at hospitals.

Some may wonder why Iranians took over as the main actors in drug trafficking, and this is tied to political circumstances. Around 1988 (Showa 63), during the ceasefire of the Iran-Iraq War, Japan had a visa exemption agreement with Iran, leading to a large influx of Iranians seeking work in Japan. Although the agreement was later terminated due to a noticeable increase in illegal residents, some remained in Japan and turned delinquent. They formed connections with Japanese organized crime groups and gradually gained control of stimulant drug sales, eventually becoming involved in brazen daylight trafficking of various drugs.

Of course, these Iranian trafficking groups were controlled by Japanese organized crime syndicates, who did not allow drugs to be supplied to Japanese dealers without their consent. Iranians were used solely as low-level street dealers. While the organized crime syndicates supplied the drugs, some substances like cannabis were reportedly obtained independently through smuggling routes involving Russian criminal organizations. However, the accuracy of this information remains unclear to this day.

Investigations are more difficult than when dealing with gangs.

Until then, the trafficking of stimulants and marijuana was the exclusive domain of gangsters. The customers were usually gang members, their girlfriends, the “semi-gokudo” or “semi-gres,” who were active in the surrounding areas, and people in the water business. In a sense, this made it easier to conduct investigations.

Young people, however, had a certain fear and resistance to direct contact with gang members, and they were hesitant to obtain drugs. However, being able to talk to them casually on the street and using the cell phone, which was widespread at that time, they probably felt less fear and resistance to buying drugs from Iranian traffickers. Drugs became much easier for them to obtain than before. The Iranians became more sophisticated in their drug trafficking methods and subsequently shifted to non-personal methods, which became the norm. Drugs were sent by mail or courier service, and payment was made by bank transfer.

Around the beginning of the 1960s (from 1985), cellular phone rentals began. In 1994, cell phones were sold instead of rented, and the use of cell phones exploded.

As a result, some Iranian traffickers made huge fortunes through trafficking. When they returned to their home countries, they sold cellular phones with many customers’ phone numbers to other traffickers for tens of millions of yen, and drug trafficking was easily continued by new traffickers afterwards. Prepaid card-type cell phones were also released and could be purchased at convenience stores at the time. Since it was not necessary to show identification in order to buy them, they were actively used for drug transactions.

Drugs Become Even More Accessible with the Spread of the Internet

Around 1996 (Heisei 8), the Internet became widespread, and information on drug trafficking began to appear on Internet bulletin boards. Drugs were then sold online, where customers who saw the information on the bulletin boards placed orders via the Internet and paid for the drugs through their bank accounts, and the drugs were then mailed to them by the traffickers.

 

The development of communication devices has made it possible for traffickers to sell a wide variety of drugs to an unspecified number of people anonymously and without having to meet them face to face through personal computers. Young people, who are skilled at using the Internet, are now able to acquire drugs with ease. This phenomenon has created new problems. First, it became difficult to track drug traffickers, making it difficult to arrest them and making it more difficult to destroy them. Second, drugs have spread to the younger generation, expanding the base of drug abuse even more than before.

In other words, drug crimes by minors, especially junior high and high school students, have increased, and in other words, the age of drug abuse has become younger. This is due to the fact that drug-related guilt has become less pronounced, and a tendency has emerged to view drug use as a fashionable activity. In addition, the emergence of new types of drug traffickers and abusers, such as Iranians, and ordinary, everyday people, has made drug crimes more vicious and sophisticated, and more difficult to investigate.

In the second part of the article, “A couple of around 20 years old in a car…Drug Enforcement Officers Seized a Trafficking Scene in Nagoya’s Central Park”, narcotics officers uncovered and exposed a sophisticated Iranian trafficking ring. The article describes how narcotics officers exposed and exposed the increasingly sophisticated Iranian trafficking ring.