Will people with acute pain want a new painkiller whose list price is $15.50 a pill when a generic prescription drug is at least as effective and costs only 50 cents a pill? They will if the generic drug is an opioid that carries the potential for addiction and the new medicine is a non-opioid that poses no such known risk.

The nonaddictive painkiller suzetrigine (Journavx) is as effective for acute pain as a common opioid treatment

The drug, shown to be almost as effective as opioids for short-term pain, is the first fundamentally new kind of painkiller to win FDA approval in more than 20 years.