Don’t kill yourself trying to stop smoking

You know you’ve got a risky drug on your hands when the best that experts can say is that it’s safer than smoking!

The Chantix story is a familiar refrain of desperate drugmakers attempting to clean up the image of an extremely risky pharmaceutical, hoping that we’ll all forget about the horror stories associated with it.

And as apologists for Chantix have said, smokers are big risk takers anyway, or they wouldn’t puff away in the first place. There’s nothing wrong having them take another gamble with their lives if it might help in the long run.

To that, I say baloney. There are plenty of ways to quit that won’t have you risking depression, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia, aggression, and thoughts of suicide – to name just a few.

Now, a new study is making the media rounds to try to sugarcoat Chantix side effects that have to do with your heart. Drugmakers are working hard to paint a happy face on what’s an extremely dangerous way to try and break a habit.

Here’s what you need to know before you or a loved one are asked to take a drug that’s just as risky now as ever.

The heart of the matter

Here are some things that Pfizer hopes any smoker trying to quit will forget about:

• Pfizer settled close to 3,000 lawsuits over the drug for $273 million five years ago.
• Confidential payments were made to end the litigation in the case of Mark Whitely, whose suicide was blamed on Chantix.
• Billy Bedsole Jr. said that Chantix caused him to suffer memory loss, depression, and suicidal thoughts, ultimately landing him in the hospital. Billy’s case against Pfizer was also confidentially settled.
• Way back in 2008, the FAA prohibited pilots and air traffic controllers from taking Chantix due to “possible severe psychiatric side effects.”

Now, Pfizer is trying to wave its magic wand and make the drug’s danger to your heart vanish into thin air.

Just last week, researchers released a Big Pharma-sponsored study that attempts to exonerate Chantix and Zyban (a stop-smoking aid made by GlaxoSmithKline with almost identical warnings on the label).

I won’t go into all the details here, but what these drugmakers want you to hear can be summed up in one of the many headlines covering the story: “Stop-smoking drugs Chantix, Zyban pose no heart risks, study says.”

Dr. Nancy Rigotti, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, called the findings “enormously reassuring.”

But unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Big Pharma can’t just click its heels three times and get its wish for its beloved blockbuster drugs to be safe.

To do that, it will have to make many years of research — such as a decade-old study out of Canada that found that those on Chantix were over 70 percent more likely to suffer serious heart problems – disappear.

That includes the FDA’s 2012 warning that a “higher occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events” was found in those on the drug.

And another large Canadian study released just last year found that using Chantix can make you a third more likely to end up in the ER with unstable angina, vascular problems, or even a heart attack or stroke.

I guess Pfizer thought it was on a roll, as over a year ago the FDA allowed the black-box warning on Chantix, one about “SERIOUS NEUROPSYCHIATRIC EVENTS” to be removed.

But like this new research, that didn’t make Chantix any safer to take.

The good news is that many smokers have been successful in quitting the habit without putting their lives (and those in their vicinity!) in danger.

One method is acupuncture, which is even offered at the Cleveland Clinic as a way to lessen nicotine cravings. Another is the use of Chinese herbs (which should be customized by an herbalist before trying).

Watching out for certain “trigger” foods — such as red meat, coffee, and alcoholic beverages — and keeping yourself well hydrated have also proven effective.

But whatever you try, never allow Big Pharma-sponsored propaganda to take you from the frying pan and into the fire.

“Stop-smoking drugs Chantix, Zyban pose no heart risks, study says” Lindsey Tanner, April 9, 2018, AP, durangoherald.com