TOKYO: Oregon woman arrested in Japan for receiving a prescription of Adderall in a care package from her physician mother. Carrie Russell had her mother, who is a physician, ship a care package to her that contained a supply of the stimulant, a drug readily available in the U.S., but illegal in Japan.
Weeks before an Oregon woman expected to start her new job as an English teacher in Japan, undercover cops busted her for allegedly smuggling a bottle of Adderall into the country.
Russel was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder at age 7. The graduate of Western Oregon University is now jailed outside of Nagoya on smuggling charges after her friends witnessed plain-clothed police officers arrest her the night of Feb. 20 at a restaurant in Tokyo, the Oregonian reported.
Her adoptive parents, John and Jill Russell, learned of the arrest the next day from their daughter’s friends.
“We would never imagine something like this to assault us from a civilized country like Japan,” the woman’s father, John Russell, told the Oregonian.
Her mother tried to explain the context behind the care package in two statements to Japanese police, but her testimony has not resulted in her daughter’s freedom.
The family’s attorney in Portland, Loren Podwill, says her parents are working with lawmakers and the State Department to find a “quick and successful resolution.”
“We fully respect the government of Japan and their legal system,” Podwill said in a statement to the Daily News. He hopes authorities will see Russell’s actions as a mistake and not criminal.
He cited the arrest as a difference in “philosophies and laws regarding the treatment of ADD.”
Jill Russell sent the package intended for her daughter to a South Korean address where she lived before learning of a job offer in Nagoya.
She had repackaged the medication obtained legally through Russell’s prescription in the U.S. to “preserve Carrie’s privacy and dignity around a sensitive issue,” referring to mental health, she said.
The family never realized Japan forbids Adderall and similar stimulants and violators can be “arrested as a criminal on the spot, immediately without a warrant in principle,” according to a document buried on the Consulate-General of Japan in Seattle’s website.
