Controlled Delivery Busts Foreign Group Smuggling 230 kg of Meth in Waste Materials

Former narcotics officer Ryōji Takahama (77) of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, who was on the front lines of drug investigations from the Shōwa to the Heisei era. He is also a living witness to history, possessing firsthand knowledge of how drug-related crimes have evolved over time. This is the fifth installment of his series detailing the realities of drug smuggling crackdowns.

Illegal drugs are smuggled into the country using four different methods

Drugs smuggled into Japan from overseas are still entering the country in large quantities and in more sophisticated ways. The four main methods are offshore trade, commercial cargo, mobile importation, and international mail.

The offshore trade is also called seizure. There are two ways to do this: a carrier ship bringing drugs and a collection ship receiving the drugs make contact at sea using a GPS (Global Positioning System) and receive the drugs from the other party on the spot. In the other method, the carrier dumps the waterproofed drugs at sea, attached to a buoy, at a predetermined location, and after leaving the location, the collection vessel pulls up the drugs drifting in the waves. Both methods are then unloaded at a small local port where customs and police are less vigilant.

The method of dumping the drugs on buoys sometimes failed in the days when GPS was not available. Incidents of methamphetamine that were missed and washed up on the beach sometimes made the headlines.

When I was working in the Kyushu office, I received information about a large amount of methamphetamine smuggling from a person who was in the center of a gangster organization. He told me that this gang, which is located in Kyushu, was conducting this seizure off the coast of Kyushu, such as off the coast of Tsushima, and landing large quantities of methamphetamine in small fishing ports.

Once the methamphetamine was brought to Kyushu, it was transported overland to the Kanto region, where it was spread throughout the country from a branch of that gang in Tokyo. Although the information was not concrete and the case was not exposed, it was one of the most effective ways to systematically spread methamphetamine throughout the country, and it was not improbable.