Elderly Japanese are discovering the benefits of cannabis products

For most of her life Yoshimura Hiroko, an 81-year-old woman in Hadano near Tokyo, had never given a thought to cannabis. But when she started suffering pain and paralysis caused by multiple sclerosis three years ago, Kazuyoshi, her 51-year-old son, stumbled upon cannabidiol (cbd), a non-psychoactive cannabis compound. He started dropping a dose of cbd oil under her tongue each day; a month later the pain had faded.

Ms Yoshimura belongs to a growing club of elderly Japanese who have discovered cbd. Marijuana remains illegal in Japan, including for medical use. But a global trend towards its liberalisation has reduced the stigma associated with cbd products, which are legal. As a result, the local market is expected to grow to some $800m by 2024, up from a mere $59m in 2019. That suggests faster growth even than the global market, which could reach $47bn over the next six years, from $4.9bn in 2021.