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WhyQuit, an organization that advocates quitting smoking using the cold turkey method, recently published an article that takes Pfizer to task over its latest Chantix ads. The group claims that the pharmaceutical company’s new television commercials hide information from the viewer – information that, if known, would likely dissuade most smokers from using the drug as a smoking cessation aid.
Reynolds American, the second largest American producer of cigarettes and other tobacco products, is in the advanced stages of negotiating a purchase of Niconovum, a Swedish company that manufactures smoking cessation products. If the deal works, as it appears it will, it shows the determination of the tobacco giants to cash in on the “whole cycle of a smoker from the first puff to the last piece of gum,” said Chip Brian, a business analyst for SmarTrend.
It’s difficult for some coffee drinkers to imagine life before decaf. Pretty soon it may be difficult for some smokers to imagine life before de-nic. A New York company called 22nd Century Limited recently announced that it is making progress in its development of a very low nicotine (VLN) cigarette that uses a specially engineered and proprietary form of tobacco.
Chantix made an appearance in last week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) when one contributor wrote that the Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged receiving nearly 100 reports of suicide and nearly 200 reports of attempted suicide likely linked to the use of Chantix. Additionally, the FDA also said it is compliling reports of Chantix patients being involved in traffic accidents.
I have that “born late” feeling. I quit smoking before I had a chance to “smoke” electronic cigarettes, the latest and most overtly sci-fi smoking cessation tool to come along in my lifetime. My first attempt to quit smoking was in 1989, 4 years after I started smoking, when my college roommate yanked a brand-new pack of smokes out of my hand and chucked them to the middle of a retaining pond near our New Mexico State dorm. I had given Keith my permission to do that or something like it “if you ever catch me with a pack of cigarettes again,” which was about seven hours earlier that same day.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that it will require drug manufacturers to put boxed warnings on the product labeling for Chantix (varenicline) and Zyban (bupropion hydrochloride, otherwise called Wellbutrin when prescribed as an antidepressant). Both Chantix and Zyban, commonly prescribed to patients as smoking cessation aids, have been linked to serious behavioral changes and other symptoms. Agitation, hostility, depression, and suicidal thoughts and actions are possible side effects that users should be keenly aware of, the FDA warns.
CNN reports that Pfizer is thinking about launching a clinical test to determine if Chantix can help prevent smokers from having heart attacks. Considering all the negative publicity that has surrounded the drug over the last one and a half years, it’s understandable that Pfizer would want to invest a good deal of time and money in finding some benefit … even if they locate just one slightly dubious side effect, such as a reduced risk of heart attack in people who have quit smoking.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently published a comprehensive report that exposes a very questionable relationship between the University of Wisconsin-Madison college of medicine and the drug industry. Using the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an example, the report describes how pharmaceutical companies have infiltrated the nation’s universities by funding physician education courses. Critics argue that the arrangement is unethical; when a college accepts hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in funds for such classes, the patrons expect something back. So what might appear superficially as a philanthropic gesture is actually an arrangement with lots of strings attached — an arrangement, critics say, that amounts to huge conflicts of interest.
It looks like there is another ominous blip in the Chantix radar. Pfizer decided to ditch the ad agency it has been using for its Chantix advertisements. The announcement comes after the company announced the smoking cessation drug’s fourth quarter earnings, which fell 36 percent from the same time last year to $180 million.
The Canadian Press reports that Health Canada, the government department responsible for Canada’s public health policies, is currently working with Pfizer to strengthen the warnings for the smoking cessation drug Chantix. Chantix is sold in Canada and elsewhere overseas under the name Champix.
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