People here hardly even joke about marijuana. That absence of any Japanese signatures on the letter of the 500 to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the special U.N. plenary session on drugs in May 1998 came as a bit of a revelation to me. There's a wide field here, for educating politicians and voters. I think, the most likely converts are to be found amongst the ranks of the Democratic Party, based on their humanistic values. I've heard there's a clandestine smoker scene amongst English teachers and other expatriates.
Most English teachers are young males who are risk takers.
This figure is of little consequence for politics though, as few of these foreigners will become politically involved and can't vote anyway. The language barrier does not make them very effective advocates either and their social status is usually pretty low. Apparently, he got it from New Zealand and had been selling it to students. He must have served his sentence by now and been deported. I have heard of other gaijin English teachers who smoke it and read about one in Yokohama who got busted for growing it on a rented plot of municipal land.