JAPANESE RAISING ‘POT’ WITH NO KICK (original) (raw)
JAPANESE RAISING ‘POT’ WITH NO KICK
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Robert Trumbull Special to The New York Times
- Sept. 2, 1973
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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TOKYO, Sept. 1—A new kind of marijuana without a drug content, comparable to coffee without caffeine and cigarettes without nicotine, is being developed in Japan to foil thieves. They have been raiding commercial fields of hemp, plant containing the drug.
You can still smoke the new strain, but you don't “turn on,” according to the authorities in Tochigi Prefecture, the scene of a growing wave of such thefts.
Hemp, also called cannabis, has been produced in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, for hundreds of years. The valuable commercial plant also contains tetrahydrocannabinol, the narcotic ingredient in the dried hemp leaves that are known as marijuana, or pot.
The cultivators plan to replace more than 400 acres of the standard plant with the drugless variety.
Most Production There
Tochigi Prefecture produces 120 tons of hemp a year, about 95 per cent of Japanese output. Hemp fiber has a number of commercial uses here, including cloth, rope and thongs for the ubiquitous geta, the traditional wooden clog.
In the last two years growers of hemp have been plagued by thefts, presumably for smoking. The Tochigi police last year reported the arrest of 27 persons for the offense, including three American soldiers. There have been 14 cases this year, with two American servicemen among those involved.
The Tochigi authorities are looking for a suitable site for cultivation to produce seeds from a drug‐free variety discovered in 1967 by Itsuo Nishioka, professor of pharmacy at Kyushu University in Fukuoka.
“Originally all the hemp in Japan was free of the narcotic,” Professor Nishioka said in telephone interview. The drug, he explained, was introduced by pollination from imported plants that did contain the drug and it soon spread through the commercial fields.
Found in Remote Area
Professor Nishioka found remnants of the drug‐free variety in a remote village in southern Japan and began careful cultivation of the strain.
“The shape of the leaves, the size, color and smell are exactly the same as in the narcotic plant,” said Masaji Arikawa, chief of the narcotic section of the Tochigi prefectural administration.
It may take as long as three years to produce the drugless hemp seeds in sufficient quantity to replace all the commercial plants in Tochigi, he added. Meanwhile, the nonnarcotic plants are being mixed in with the others to discourage the thieves.
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