Drug Use For Japan Sweetheart

Tokyo: a Japanese singer actress famous in Asia for the sweet girl next door image, was sentenced to a suspended jail sentence on Monday for using illegal stimulants in the last case of drugs celebrity in Japan.

The court granted a period of 18 months imprisonment, suspended for three years to 38 years old, Noriko Sakai, who shot to fame in the late 1980s with pop songs and later turned to acting.

Prosecutors had demanded 18 months in prison.

Drug scandal has been news of Sakai in Japan and parts of Asia where he has many fans, as she and her husband, taka Yuichi, were arrested in August for possessing and using drugs.

Sakai was detained for nearly 40 days after his arrest before being released on 5 million yen (55,500 dollars) bail.

His trial has attracted intense media and public attention in a country with a very strict attitude towards the use of drugs that are derived in part from an increase in amphetamine abuse after the Second World War when the drug is sold without prescription.

More than 3,000 people lined up in a park near the courtroom by one of the notes of 21 gallery to see the verdict, while hundreds of people jostled with the media to get a glimpse of the actress as she entering and leaving the building.

Sakai case follows the arrest of other high-profile charges of abuse of substances, including a Russian sumo wrestler who was later expelled from the sport.

While the legalization of marijuana or its use for medical purposes has been debated and adopted in some Western countries, such ideas have not caught on in Japan.

In one of the country’s most famous busts, Beatle Paul McCartney spent nine days in jail in Tokyo in the 1980s after arriving at the airport with a bag of marijuana in his suitcase.