With a 99.9% conviction rate and a low tolerance for drug use, you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the law in Japan. New reports, however, show that more kids than ever in Japan are turning to drugs and minor crime at a tender age.
New figures from the National Police Agency and the Metropolitan Police Department paint a picture of younger students getting caught up in drug use and retail theft. What’s accounting for the spike?
Rising marijuana cases among Japanese youth hit record
The National Police Agency announced on February 26 that the number of minors busted for marijuana-related offenses in 2025 reached a record 1,373, a 21.7 percent jump from the previous year. The figure marks the highest since records began in 1990 and represents a staggering 6.5-fold increase from just 210 cases in 2016.
Of those apprehended, 173 were specifically charged with marijuana “use.” That category only became subject to criminal penalties under a revised law enacted in 2024.
The breakdown reveals that working minors accounted for the largest share at 624 cases, followed by high school students at 313 and unemployed minors at 283. University students made up 62 cases, while 28 were middle school students.
When police surveyed those caught about how they first came to use marijuana, 64.3 percent said they were invited or pressured by someone else. 26.5 percent said they sought it out on their own. Social media platforms, where marijuana is bought and sold using coded language, appear to be a major pipeline.
The NPA said that younger individuals tend to try drugs out of sheer curiosity.
The problem has also surfaced in organized settings, particularly university athletic clubs. In August 2025, two members of Kokushikan University’s judo team, including a 19-year-old, were arrested on suspicion of violating the Narcotics Control Act. In 2023, marijuana use also roiled the American football team at Nihon University after it came out that officials turned a blind eye to athletic drug use for years.
Meanwhile, minors are increasingly involved in online crime as well. Twenty-seven minors were busted for online casino gambling in 2025, up from just three the year before, with 21 of them being middle or high school students. In one particularly brazen case, a male middle school student impersonated a female university student on an internet forum and scammed a man out of 2.88 million yen ($18.4K) to fund his gambling.
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Tokyo shoplifting arrests reveal growing youth crime trend
On a separate front, the Metropolitan Police Department revealed that shoplifting arrests in Tokyo exceeded 6,000 cases in 2024, an increase of more than 400 from the prior year.
Once again, an age breakdown shows that the kids aren’t alright.
Of those 6,276 cases, 711, roughly 11 percent, involved elementary and middle school students. The numbers underscore a growing pattern of minors engaging in theft at an age when many are barely old enough to understand the legal consequences.
Store owners are struggling to keep up with increasingly sophisticated methods. One shop targeted by thieves described how young shoplifters have taken to cutting security tags off merchandise and slipping items into personal bags they bring from home.
The total number of recognized shoplifting incidents hit 11,422, the highest in five years. This suggests that the actual scale of the problem far exceeds what arrest figures alone can capture.
In response, the Metropolitan Police Department has produced an awareness video emphasizing that shoplifting is a crime (who knew?). The propaganda refers to shoplifting as a “gateway crime,” one that can lead minors down a path toward more serious offenses. The video brings to mind other infamous media campaigns against crime and drugs in Japan, such as Wakayama Prefecture’s “reefer madness” manga.
The rising crime stats come at a time when more elementary and middle school-age kids in Japan are refusing to go to school. Taken together, they paint a picture of a youth increasingly disaffected from Japanese society. The rise in shoplifting may also be a sign of the economic pressure that inflation is placing on Japanese families.
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Sources
大麻で摘発の少年、過去最多1373人 「興味本位」が落とし穴に. Mainichi Shimbun
都内の万引き検挙数が6000件超え うち10％以上が小中学生によるもの. TV Asahi News
