Pharmacists across Japan say they are increasingly subjected to harassment and abuse from customers over drug shortages. Why do you think some customers act like this?

Could it be because there is a shortage of drugs?

Sometimes my local Pharmacist does not have the drug I need, but usually within 48 hours it arrives.

It’s their health. They been ordered a prescription by a doctor. The medicine may be for an immediate, urgent condition. Now the pharmacist tells them, “Sorry, we don’t have it.”

The shortage may not be the pharmacist’s fault. The customer’s anger may be misplaced. Still, the reason for the anger seems pretty clear.

If the drug is urgent, then you can ask the pharmacist to phone around to see who has it.

"Just give me the DRUGS now !!! "....and its sorted.

Withdrawal symptoms?

Because the pharma companies in Japan have got the population addicted to the idea that taking a medicine for absolutely anything and everything is the answer to all their problems.

I still can’t get over how every person around me asks did I take medicine if I mention a sniffle, a slight cough, a headache, hay fever, a sore elbow….

Because the pharma companies in Japan have got the population addicted to the idea that taking a medicine for absolutely anything and everything is the answer to all their problems.

If the drugs alleviate a problem do you think the patients are going to listen to anybody that says they should just endure the problem? For many these symptoms that you so readily dismiss can be incapacitating enough to make the patient unable to work without treatment.

Too much power harassment in Japan from customers to staff. Pharmacies, conbini and supermarkets reported often in the news.

Politik KillsToday  08:10 am JST

Because the pharma companies in Japan have got the population addicted to the idea that taking a medicine for absolutely anything and everything is the answer to all their problems. 

I still can’t get over how every person around me asks did I take medicine if I mention a sniffle, a slight cough, a headache, hay fever, a sore elbow….

Yep. Just about every second ad on TV is from a pharmaceutical company plying its wares for everything from a sniffle to muscle aches to joint pain to just about anything else not requiring a prescription. They plant the idea, usually with a celebrity's (often dressed in a white coat to add cred) help, that every minor discomfort requires a drug to ensure life can go on.

It's one thing for there to be a shortage of important life-saving medication to be in short supply, but quite another for meds that just alleviate some discomfort. The main question doesn't distinguish between them, so we can only speculate about exactly which drugs the customers are getting upset about. But as Wallace says, they can get the pharmacist to call around to see who does have it. Not an ideal solution, but we're not living in a perfect world.

frustration...illness...desperation?

What shortage? I am supplied and recommended or ordered to swallow more than I like to or more than even necessary. I am surrounded and bombed by medications and drug prescriptions.

What shortage? 

The shortage that has been widely reported since last year, lack of empathy means it may become impossible for people to even think others may have difficulties when they themselves are fine.

Why, what's actually changed? It's clearly inflation and the destruction of the Yen's 'real' purchasing power.

While healthy and not someone who frequents pharmacies, imagine prices going UP like everything else, certainly FLU shots are now FAR more $expensive.

Prescribed medicines under health insurance are very reasonable prices

The customers are probably already a little grumpy from having to visit the doctor for again, waiting for an hour or so, as they do every month or two, just to get a prescription for medication they take indefinitely, instead of being given one prescription with a year of refills that can be ordered over the phone or online, and picked up once ready, which is the SOP in the US. I really miss that prescription system.

I have been on prescription drugs for five years during my post-cancer. I visit the hospital every three months and collect a prescription for my drugs. it would be dangerous to prescribe one year of drugs without seeing a doctor.

This is a combination of frustration for not receiving their mandatory medicine and also the callous ridiculous entitlement of the Japanese people, who still live by the retarded principle that the "Customer is a God".

I know I would be pretty upset if a drug that could help me wasn't in stock within a few days. Imagine if it were a painkiller that you needed. Or for a condition that is getting rapidly worse over time like an infection. Unless we are talking biologics, drugs are also dirt simple to manufacture. Given all of that I wouldn't take it out on the pharmacist but I would be fuming at the cause of the shortage.