Second Trial For Drug Use
After 10 p.m. of September 20, 2004, he was arrested for violation of the Firearms and Swords Control Law in a street in Nakano because he had a butterfly knife with a blade 8 centimeters long. He shared his car on the street with a female acquaintance then and the police questioned them. After the investigation, it was also found out that he had about 2g of amphetamines and about 4g of marijuana in a rucksack. As a result, he was once again arrested for it on the evening of the next day because a woman with him said "This rucksack is his" and he admitted it, too. After this incident, former Rats & Star member Masayuki Suzuki apologized for Tashiro's crimes in his place. Tashiro stated that the pressure of stardom contributed to his addiction to drugs.
Following this arrest, Tashiro was harshly criticized by many of his former co-workers, who said:
We want him to get out from the entertainment world because what he did was despicable
— Cha Katou, Ken Shimura, Masayuki Suzuki, Nobuyoshi Kuwano
The damned fool! I'd like to slap him!
— Kenichi Mikawa
I don't want to be associated with such a man.
— Takeshi Kitano
He was virtually retired from the entertainment world and was treated like he never existed. From here on, the media would refer to him as the "former entertainer", and all the recordings and pictures taken when he was a Chanels/Rats & Star member were almost never broadcast anymore, and if they were, Tashiro's voice would be lowered to a hush or removed entirely, and no part of his body would show. Newspapers and magazines tacitly agreed not to talk about him at all. In an episode of a comedic duo Bakusho Mondai (爆笑問題, Bakushō Mondai?), host Hikari Ota accidentally said his full name. In The God of Entertainment (エンタの神様, enta no kami-sama?), Sayaka Aoki, while displaying only part of his name, said "I put a camera in the chest drawer", which caused a general laugh. On the other hand, the part of Ken Shimura's commemorative speech held for the release of his program on DVD where he said "Have you disappeared like Takafumi Horie when you were knocked-out? I wanted to release this five years ago" was not broadcast.
He was arrested for possession of amphetamines on September 21, 2004. On February 7, 2005, he was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months imprisonment. On June 26, 2008, he was released from the prison.
Read more about this topic: Masashi Tashiro
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