5ch users debated the age-old question of “why is booze okay but weed isn’t?” The thread touched on cannabis’s history in Japanese Shinto rituals and textile use, as well as how postwar regulation began under GHQ occupation. Also discussed was Thailand’s temporary de facto decriminalization of cannabis, which is now facing renewed restrictions after a change in government. Posters traded personal takes on whether alcohol or cannabis is more dangerous, but no consensus was reached.
and honestly alcohol probably should be banned too,
but humanity's been living alongside alcohol throughout history,
so it's just too late to ban it at this point.
One of humanity's design flaws, really.
Cannabis actually has a longer history in Japan than alcohol does.
That's Japan for you.
Which politician is doing drugs, exactly?
And so old grudges drive the elderly to start wars, and the young die without ever understanding why. Then the young who pile up through that become old themselves, and the old start another war. That repetition is human history.
Muslims are a flat no on it, generally.
Even in horror movies it's treated as not really a good thing.
Japanese Shinto is linked to cannabis, but not for smoking — it's about using hemp fiber.
Even today, hemp fiber is woven into cloth, paper, and rope for use in Shinto rituals.
That guy's definitely never actually tried it, I guarantee it (エアプ, lit. "air play" — net slang for talking big without real experience).
Nah, cannabis really isn't as deeply tied to human history as that.
Even in Heian-era texts, alcohol always comes up without fail.
No matter the country, humans and alcohol are inseparable.
Just look at how much cannabis gets used in Shinto rituals and you'll see.
Back in the day they'd throw huge amounts of it into ritual bonfires and everyone would gather around and smoke it.
Up until the Meiji era, "tobacco" basically meant cannabis.
Cannabis was around too, but for various reasons it ended up banned, and since it's not exactly essential, the attitude became "fine, we don't need it" — so it's banned outside of medical use.
Cannabis was banned by GHQ after the war.
It's a pretty well-known fact that before that, it was perfectly legal in Japan too.
Yeah, but he got arrested for possession of meth and weed, though…
That guy's either mixing it with alcohol or already had a tolerance built up.
Even without banning it outright, I think the penalties for causing incidents while drunk should be a lot harsher.
Right now if you just cause a scene, you spend one night in custody and go home.
Maybe a three-strikes system — cause trouble three times and it's forced hospitalization — or a points system where going over a certain threshold means prison time or forced treatment.
Prohibition was such a disaster that nobody's going to try that again.
Time genuinely feels like it's crawling,
you can't think straight, your consciousness gets foggy,
and you keep muttering "wait, I'm forgetting, this is scary" on loop for an hour while blacking out and coming back over and over — it's hell, a total bad trip.
You've probably only ever tried the old-school "legal highs" (synthetic drugs briefly sold legally in Japan before being banned), man.
Anyone can brew alcohol at home, so there's no way to actually regulate it.
Making alcohol at home is illegal, you know.
Just chuck pine needles, sugar, and water together and you've got booze.
Apparently it tastes like Sprite.
Right, and the reason that law even sort of works is that you can just go out and buy good-quality alcohol instead.
Speaking as someone who's done it, it's not something you should do — it's pure terror.
Though I do think a tiny enough amount can be relaxing.
Gets you completely baked.
Is it still there?
They legalized weed and then brought the restrictions back, didn't they?
I went this month and it's still there, no problem.
You can smoke right on the street.
The government that was going to re-regulate it got replaced again by the one that legalized it.
So it probably won't get re-restricted at this point.
Would banning it wreck the economy, though?
Alcohol is something even amateurs can easily make themselves.
Ban it and it'll just end up circulating on the black market.
Without something to indulge in, people would go crazy from the pent-up stress instead,
and that would just mean more people snapping and causing incidents anyway.
Were people smoking it back in the Edo period or earlier too?
That would've been shredded tobacco (kizami-tabako), not weed.
It's got roughly 1,000 years of history as an anesthetic, technically, but it's only been used recreationally since the 19th century.
So its history as a recreational thing is shorter than tobacco's.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Japan’s Cannabis Control Act was enacted in 1948, its origins tangled up with postwar GHQ occupation policy and international narcotics-control treaties — a layered history that can’t be reduced to a simple conspiracy theory. At the same time, it’s true that cannabis (as hemp fiber) has long been used for shimenawa ropes and hemp cloth in Shinto rituals, making it, alongside alcohol, a traditional Japanese resource in its own right. Posters in the thread disagreed over which is more dangerous, alcohol or cannabis, but comparing dependency and accident risk is really something that should be argued from statistics and medical data rather than personal anecdotes — a point where misunderstandings easily creep in. Thailand’s cannabis policy tells a similar cautionary tale: after being effectively decriminalized in 2022, a change of government has since brought renewed moves toward re-regulation, so it can’t simply be filed away as a “legal country.”
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] The Reason Alcohol’s OK But Weed Isn’t Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
