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August 22, 2007
Sammi Hawkins, a 41 year old resident of Waterford, quit smoking by taking the Chantix prescription medication. It all started when she picked up the medication in August 2006 and continued taking it for 6 weeks after which she stopped smoking without any carvings to go back to smoking. She says that it was a miracle medication for her.
Before trying Chantix, she tried everything from patches, nicotine gums, lozenges but nothing worked. Even the death of her husband, from lung cancer, after 4 weeks of getting married didn’t help her quit smoking. People couldn’t understand how the death of her husband from lung cancer didn’t stop her from smoking and so she was hiding her smoking habit from everyone which was causing unwanted pressure on her.
Sammi Hawkins now works for the American Lung Association of Michigan advocating lung cancer awareness.
Such success stories will help Pfizer, the manufacturer of the medication, to increasing it profits after the lagging sales of its cholesterol-lowering drug Liptor. Chantix sales were $101 million in 2006 but went up to $362 million in the just the first half of 2007. If this medication continues to perform this well, then it maybe Pfizer’s next big bet after the success of Viagra. Chantix can cost of up to $320-$360 for a 12 weeks dose taking into account that some insurance covers it.
Chantix makes it easy to quit smoking but also requires having the will power noted Coe, the Pfizer chemist and former smoker. The success of this new Pfizer drug is attributed to the different way it works when compared to Zyban which an older smoking session medication.
Chantix was approved by the FDA in the 2nd quarter of 2006.
Source: http://www.freep.com
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