‘I could go to Japan for free’, says US woman caught with smuggled cannabis

Tokyo police arrested two American women for allegedly smuggling US$1 million worth of cannabis, with one suspect claiming she was motivated by a free trip to Japan, an official and media reports said on Friday.

The pair, both 25, arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda airport from New York last Saturday with two suitcases in which “cannabis-like dried plants were secretly stored”, a police spokesman said.

Japan has some of the world’s strictest drug laws and smuggling or possession of illegal narcotics can result in a jail term.

The dried cannabis weighed around 30kg (66lbs) and is valued at about 150 million yen (US$970,000), media reported.

One of the women told police that she took the job for the money and because “I was attracted by the fact I could go to Japan for free”, Nippon Television reported.

The other suspect denies the allegation, telling police she “didn’t know that cannabis was inside” the suitcase, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported, citing unnamed police sources.