Some additional commentaries I have been using when getting questions about Chantix:

 

I am going to attach an email reply I wrote to the first person that wrote me asking about an over the counter smoking aid a few years ago. It also illustrates how I feel about Chantix, and all new products that are going to be introduced over time. I will start giving such products attention when they meet the criteria discussed in the second paragraph below:

I have seen the xxxxxxx ads in my area for quite a while. If I am not mistaken, I think I saw those same ads resurface over and over again over a pretty long time period—maybe years. It’s hard to keep all of the shams straight—they really do all look alike after a while. It is amazing what wild claims you will see for products to help you to quit smoking or lose weight too. It’s ironic that you don’t see such ads for alcoholism or heroin or crack dependencies. Why do you think that is? Because if someone made such wild claims about beating a real drug addiction they would likely be held accountable to back up those claims. It seems though that no such accountability is enforced with tobacco use. It’s a shame though, especially when considering we are dealing with the drug which is every bit as addictive as any of these others—actually more so except maybe for crack, and kills more people than all of them combined. But again, it is not like society really takes cigarettes seriously

I could spend a lot of time researching each and every product that becomes available and makes wonderful claims but in all honesty, I have zero interest in any of them. You know when I will actually look into a product in depth. It is when I am out in the real world and all of a sudden encounter a few people, maybe five in a short time period who tells me that they actually have quit smoking by using the product�?U>and that they were now off of the product and cigarettes for a solid year. This shouldn’t be hard for me to find considering I ask at least 50 new people a month, and sometimes hundreds of new people a month how they quit smoking and how the people they know who have quit smoking and have been off for at least a year, had actually first stopped. Well, this year I asked several thousand people—many of them physicians and dentists who also in turn deal with hundreds to thousands of people. You know how many times xxxxxxx was brought up? Zero. Do you know how many times somebody has emailed a question about xxxxxxxx? Counting your email—one. Kind of gives you a clue to what kind of word of mouth this miracle product is getting from its users.

For now Chantix is going to get a lot of good press for quite a while, being that you will soon have a pharmaceutical powerhouse pushing it as hard as possible. Until we can get some real world time behind us we cannot prove or disprove that the product is going to have any real impact on long-term success for its users.

Just last week I had my first live encounter with a person who used Chantix. (Live encounter defined as not Internet based emails from strangers). He has tried Chantix twice now, both times for three months each. Each time he came off the Chantix he said he started suffering what he described as the same withdrawals he had when he had tried to quit in the past and relapsed within days to smoking. He finally quit cold turkey and now he is off smoking for a few weeks and feeling much better than he has in a long time.

I should also note, both John and I are getting frequent emails from people regarding Chantix. There are many that praise the product as having helped people get various time periods under their belt smoke free, but the vast majority of these emails are from people who are still using the medication. We don't get many from people who got off the medication without problems and maintained their smoke free status.

Also particularly troubling to us is the number of emails we are getting from people with side effects, some quite severe to using the medication. One just sent us a link to an Internet board that had lots of people complaining of symptoms that were lasting a whole lot longer than the few days of withdrawal people may get when just going cold turkey. That has always been something I have seen as a problem with quit smoking aids out there, they either prolong the withdrawal period by keeping nicotine in the system or have their own side effects that cause people to experience physical complaints and symptoms much longer than people who simply go cold turkey. Cold turkey "may be" harder the first few days but physically, symptoms ease up quickly and it is a really safe method to quit. Here is the link to another string we have had previously at AskJoel that addresses this safety issue: "Isn't quitting cold turkey too dangerous?"