Selling painkillers in Japan used to be like pulling teeth. That was until baby boomers discovered how analgesics could take the sting from arthritis, diabetic nerve damage and the ravages of cancer.
Now demand is taking off and drugmakers are introducing new products to a market where per-capita opioid consumption is the fourth-lowest in the developed world. Sales of drugs prescribed for chronic pain in Japan will jump 62 percent to ¥188 billion ($1.7 billion) in the seven years through 2024, Fuji Keizai Co., a Tokyo-based market research firm, said in a report in November.
Unlike the U.S., where President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, Japan has had an aversion to narcotics because of restrictive laws and the stigma of addiction. But chronic-pain sufferers are demanding relief, and authorities are doing more to help them, especially since workers aren't economically productive when they are agonized by aches. A 2015 study estimated chronic pain costs Japan about ¥1.95 trillion annually.