In the last five years, 544 suicides and 1,869 attempted suicides have been reported in connection with the anti-smoking drug Chantix, according to documents obtained from the FDA by the Al Jazeera show “America Tonight” under the Freedom of Information Act. According to Al Jazeera, Chantix is responsible for more adverse events than any other drug on the market, including suicidal behaviors, depression, psychosis, aggression, seizures, blackouts, temporary blindness, and blurry vision. The FAA, Defense Department, and the military have all banned the drug for critical personnel.
Of further interest:
Anti-Smoking Drug Chantix Linked To 500 Plus Suicides (Opposing Views)
From Al Jazeera:
“(Senior researcher with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Thomas Moore) continued digging into adverse event reports, particularly those involving violence. He co-authored a 2010 study in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy analyzing 26 acts of violence reported to the FDA as adverse events associated with Chantix. The study called them “inexplicable and unprovoked”: “A woman struck her 17-year-old daughter in the mouth while the daughter was driving a car…A 42-year-old man punched a stranger at a bowling alley…A 24-year-old started beating her boyfriend in bed because ‘he looked so peaceful’ and she later attempted suicide.”
“These cases had three striking characteristics,” Moore said in an interview at his Alexandria, Va., office. “First, the violence was absolutely unpredictable and senseless. Second, the victim was anybody who happened to be nearby. It could have been a fiancé. It could have been mother. It could have been a police officer. And third, these people had no history of violence and were unlikely prospects for a violent act.”
Clinical trials of Chantix have failed to turn up suicidal behavior or the type of aggression and violence reported to the FDA as adverse events.”
Um,
BAN THE ADVERTISEMENTS. That’s called *Justice*.
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When the lawsuits roll in from the families of dead patients, simply use a small portion of your massive profits to settle out of court, admitting no guilt.
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This is a very important article, because this kind of suicidal behavior clearly cannot be blamed on the “underlying mental illness,” as people who are quitting smoking are not as a group suffering from any particular set of symptoms other than being addicted to nicotine. So it’s very clear in these cases that the violence, agitation, depression, and suicidal thoughts and actions are caused by exposure to the drug itself. By extension, this proves that such causal impacts on behavior can be created by drugs that impact the brain, including “antidepressants” and “antipsychotics.”
—- Steve
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I wonder what the FDA knows about Zyban (bupropion), the other “anti-smoking drug” to which it gave a black box warning label in 2009. Bupropion is also marketed as Wellbutrin – supposedly an “anti-depressant.”
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I think most people that read the suicide risk warning have the same thoughts I once did “that won’t happen to me” they don’t know about the dissociative phenomena causing that detachment from reality when you have a bad reaction to a mind drug.
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