WHO KNEW TAXES WOULD ALTER BEHAVIOR? (via Glenn Dryfoos):

In Japan, Pfizer Is Short of Drug to Help Smokers (HIROKO TABUCHI, 1/04/11, NY Times)

When the Japanese government raised the tax on cigarettes on Oct. 1, it could have started a public health revolution in this land of heavy smokers.

The tax increase should also have been a bonanza for Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company, which makes the leading drug to help smokers break the habit.

Instead, it became a missed opportunity.

Despite ample notice of the change, Pfizer failed to produce enough of the drug, Chantix, which is sold as Champix in Japan. When tens of thousands of would-be quitters rushed to their doctors for prescriptions, Pfizer was overwhelmed. [...]

“After all that advertising, it turns out they don’t have enough,” said Hiroya Kumamaru, director of the KI Akihabara Clinic in Tokyo, who is turning away patients. His clinic has enough of the drug for only the 80 patients who began their treatment before the supply squeeze. “They should have predicted something like this,” he said.

A Pfizer spokesman in Tokyo, Kinji Iwase, said the company misjudged interest in the drug among Japanese smokers. “An extraordinary number of people decided to quit, and our reading of the situation was off,” Mr. Iwase said. “We expected more demand, but not to this extent.”