NATION : Japan Drug Seizure Fires Fears

TOKYO — Police reported a record cocaine seizure today--92 pounds found on a Colombian ship--increasing fears that Japan may soon be faced with the kind of Western-style drug epidemic it has so far managed to avoid.

“Japan has been targeted as the new, attractive, undeveloped market for hard drugs from Colombia because of its affluence,” said an officer in the narcotics division of the Japanese National Police.

Police in the port city of Yokohama raided the Colombian freighter, Ciudad de Pasto, carrying bananas and coffee late Tuesday and found 40 small plastic bags of cocaine in an air-conditioning vent in the engine room.

They arrested the ship’s engineer, Victor Julia Riano Benavides, 32, and then confiscated 90 pounds of cocaine--more than double the total of cocaine confiscated in Japan in the last five years.