Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Next week, Pfizer will once again be running Chantix ads on television. Pfizer stopped running Chantix ads last year amid increasing concern over the drug’s side effects. The familiar tortoise and the hare ads will resume on Sunday, September 14, with lengthened warnings about potential side effects. The extended warnings will occupy 41 seconds of the ad, which will run for 90 seconds – 30 seconds longer than the old ads.

According to an article in Forbes magazine, Chantix is in line to become Pfizer’s vital cash cow as patent protection for some of the company’s successful older medications expires. Patent Protection for Lipitor, currently Pfizer’s top seller, expired in Canada last year. Remaining patents will expire in 2011.

As reports of Chantix-linked depression, strange behavior, and suicides emerged late last year, the Food and Drug Administration issued an alert stating that it was investigating the reported side effects. Two months later, when the FDA required that the potential side effects be printed on the drug’s label, Pfizer ceased advertising the drug by name.

“By name” being the key words. Considering the importance of Chantix to Pfizer’s overall financial health, Pfizer couldn’t-didn’t-wouldn’t stop the advertising altogether. If you’ve seen the television spot for mytimetoquit.com, you’ve seen a Chantix ad, albeit one that looks more like a public service commercial.

One version of the ad features a mélange of smokers talking about why smoking was so hard for them to quit. The most recent ad features an individual woman who says “At 6:30 in the morning I have a cigarette. And then another on my way to work,” and so on.

This is a form of advertising that the pharmaceutical companies are turning to more and more because it’s such a deft way of drawing attention to the product without having to identify the product specifically and therefore mention any safety information. Viewers simply go to the website, where they will find a lot of information about how difficult it is to quit smoking, along with a link to the Chantix website.

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