Word: heroines
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Heroin use in Japan has been virtually eliminated by stringent enforcement of a 1963 law that provided for harsh handling of both pushers and addicts. A life sentence is meted out for selling butsu (the Japanese gangsters' untranslatable coinage for heroin). Mere possession can mean several years in jail. To cut off the demand, the government required that every user caught be confined for at least 30 days of treatment. The most Draconian fact-by American standards-is that each addict's treatment begins with "cold turkey," or withdrawal unassisted by chemical crutches such as methadone...
Verge of Hell. Many U.S. physicians believe that such agony is neither necessary nor desirable. They prefer to assist the addict through his withdrawal with other drugs (TIME, Jan. 4, 1971) and even to keep a patient on a heroin substitute indefinitely if necessary. But the Japanese, who have always taken a puritanical attitude toward drugs, regard this as a continuation of addiction...
...country's first antidrug law, adopted in the 1880s, prescribed zanshu, decapitation with a samurai sword, for those trafficking in narcotics. Opium eating, a major problem in 19th century China, never caught on in Japan. After World War II, however, heroin began to gain a foothold. Rival gangs pushed the drug among prostitutes and in the underworld generally bringing Japan to what Tokyo Social Worker Michmari Sugahara called "the verge of hell...
...authorities moved to end heroin use before it spread to the country's teenagers. A government-financed public relations campaign, assisted by the press, lectured the public on the drug's social, moral and medical dangers. The 1963 statute persuaded drug abusers that the government meant business. Some pushers reacted to the new law by simply dropping out of the business. In some brothels, the gangsters themselves forced girls to go through cold turkey; those reluctant to kick the habit were sometimes tied to their beds until withdrawal symptoms ended. Others were put in government-run hospitals that...
...Export. Drug abuse has not been completely eradicated, of course. Youngsters now go in for glue sniffing and amphetamines, and a heroin arrest is still made occasionally. But Japan's success has been dramatic enough to awe visiting American experts. Can the Japanese system be exported to the U S.? Many U.S. experts think not. Japan's population is homogeneous, generally law-abiding and, where national goals are concerned, responsive to official appeals for cooperation. Americans are far more heterogeneous and resistant to authoritarian preaching. The young, in particular, insist increasingly on asserting their "individual rights." Many officials...