Social change and Pharmaceutical Affairs Law (PAL)

: Former Japanese pharmaceutical laws, originally based on the Pharmaceutical Marketing and Handling Regulations enacted in 1874 were in operation for many years before World War II. However, in order to address several drug issues, such as poor drug quality and insufficiences regarding the role of pharmacists during the War, the laws needed to be unified and revised. In this paper, we analyzed the record of discussions held by the Imperial Diet on the bill for the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law (PAL) in 1943. This is also regarded as the origin of the current PAL (LawNo.145 in 1960). Through this analysis, we tried to clarify the relationship between the social change and the role of PAL in society. During the War, the bill was discussed, aiming at the improvement of both human resources who treated drugs, and the quality of drug materials. Diet members discussed three main points, namely, "the duty of pharmacists", "the mission of the Japan Pharmaceutical Association" and "the quality control of pharmaceutical products". Notably, the bill pharmacists are required not only to dispense drugs, a role they had previously, but also to manage drug and food hygiene through the quality control of pharmaceutical products and the inspection of food and drink, in order to improve the public health in Japan. Originally, the law was passed to deal with the extraordinary circumstances during the War, but through our analysis, we found that they proactively improved the role of the law to comply with various drug issues raised during the War, the rapid change of the pharmaceutical hygiene concept and the social transformation.