Anti-smoking lobby recommends drug linked to numerous deaths

The anti-smoking lobby ASH have controversially suggested that smokers should be placed on the dangerous chemical Varenicline, which is sold under the trade name Champix or Chantix. This drug has been linked to more than 100 reports of suicides, more than 400 reports of violence, and more than 11,000 other cases of severe side effects. Users were also associated with 18 times the number of cases of violence than an average person. Out of a study of 484 pharmaceutical drugs it was found to have the largest number of violent cases. Due to these reports Pfizer, the drugs producer, were required by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to place a “black box” warning label on the medication, ironically similar to cigarette packs.

According to the FDA:

“Chantix has been linked to serious neuro-psychiatric problems including changes in behaviour, agitation, depressed moods, suicidal ideation and suicide. The drug can cause an existing psychiatric illness to worsen or an old psychiatric illness to recur and the symptoms can recur even after the drug is discontinued.”

Big Brother Watch have previously commented on the dubious record of ASH and its links to pharmaceutical companies. While maintaining financial connections with Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, they talk of shadowy ‘influence’ from tobacco companies encouraging people to smoke.

It is difficult to determine where this influence is coming from considering the total ban on tobacco advertising, not to mention the forthcoming ban on cigarette displays and the planned legislation on plain packagingIt is wildly dangerous to suggest smokers use a drug connected to so many instances of potentially fatal side effects.

Those who wish to smoke, a perfectly legal activity, should be allowed to do so, while those who wish to quit should be provided support from groups such as NHS Smokefree, but to suggest dangerous drugs is an abuse of power for lobbying firms such as ASH which have a financial conflict of interest. They should cease promoting Varenicline and its branded versions immediately.

Comments

[DaveAtherton20]

This is ASH with their hands in the till.

"Varenicline (trade name Champix) is a drug prescribed to assist smoking cessation. Clinical trials during drug development excluded patients with active psychiatric illnesses leaving the risks associated with varenicline use in this patient population unknown.

A review of the evidence in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety 26 has concluded that although the risk of potential europsychiatric events is evident through voluntary reporting systems and reported cases in the literature, multiple studies and case reports support the use of Varenicline in the mental health population."

http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/media/3648/smandmentalhealth.pdf

[Charles]

ASH do not just want to kill smokers social lives, but want to kill them outright.
When they have killed all smokers who will they be able to blame for the illnesses and deaths of non-smokers?

[FaustiesBlog]

If ASH is funded by the pharmaceutical companies, why is the government funding it, too?

[Richard Craven]

Again, I fail to see what this has to do with the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

[Personal Freedom]

@Richard Craven... If you really don't like the content of the site, feel free to set up your own and write about whatever you like. Some people think issues relating to cigarettes and alcohol are important for personal freedoms.

[Phil J]

For more info, hit the link:-
http://freedom-2-choose.blogspot.com/2011/04/from-ash-to-trash.html

[Richard Craven]

@personal freedom

What is wrong with asking what attacking ASH has to do with the protection of privacy and civil liberties?

"Some people think issues relating to cigarettes and alcohol are important for personal freedoms"

I know!!! But why???

[Richard Craven]

@charles

"ASH do not just want to kill smokers social lives, but want to kill them outright"

This is not true. ASH do not WANT to kill anyone. I imagine you know this.

[alastair]

"Big Brother Watch have previously commented on the dubious record of ASH and its links to pharmaceutical companies."

And Big Tobacco is entirely faultless, blameless, whiter than snow and has never *ever* done anything wrong, let alone attempting to addict a significant proportion of the population to a dangerous drug for their own monetary gain. And they’ve certainly never tried to suppress evidence that smoking is bad for your health, or evidence that they *knew* that to be the case many years ago but tried to keep it quiet.

Come off it.

More to the point, Richard Craven is right. Whoever it is keeps writing this pro-smoking drivel on BBW should stop it; this isn’t an appropriate forum for it. If you *really* think that trying to discourage people from smoking is a massive civil liberties issue, then perhaps you should ponder whether your right to indulge in your filthy habit really trumps my right not to stink of your foul-smelling smoke, or for that matter my right to breathe clean air that doesn’t unnecessarily put me at increased risk of lung cancer.

[Richard Craven]

Thankyou Alastair, very well put indeed.

[Sean P]

Alastair, I will remind you that in a liberal (decreasingly so) society I/we have a right to smoke however much you may dislike it - it is rather unfortunate that single minded do-gooder types such as yourself do not see the BIGGER issues at stake here.

[Richard Craven]

Alastair never said you didn't have a right to smoke. He merely endorsed my earlier point, that discouraging people from smoking is not a civil liberties issue; and added a further point of his own, which is that smoking frequently impinges on the right of non-smokers to be free of the stink and the potential health problems inflicted on them by smokers.

[Sean P]

Of course this is an issue of civil liberties- I fail to understand how you cannot equate nanny-statism with a reduction in cl and personal choice. This impinges upon everything that BBW should be standing for. Either you are a troll or oblivious to the bigger issues here.

Unfortunately 'discouraging' uses ever more insidious tactics to marginalise and restrict choice it does not mean encouragement! Where does it end? Smoking banned in your own home? In your car? This country has steadily been descending into a stasi-esque neo-fascist state for some time- it is the slow chipping away of small things such as smoking that add up. The campaign against smoking is to similar to Hitler's campaign against smoking in the rise of the Reich.

[Richard Craven]

"Of course this is an issue of civil liberties- I fail to understand how you cannot equate nanny-statism with a reduction in cl and personal choice." Sorry, you've lost me. What is cl, and how does it get reduced?

"This impinges upon everything that BBW should be standing for. Either you are a troll or oblivious to the bigger issues here."

What is a troll? Someone who disagrees with your opinions? Don't you want to engage critically with people who disagree with your opinions? Don't you want to persuade such people of the rightness of your opinions?

"Unfortunately 'discouraging' uses ever more insidious tactics to marginalise and restrict choice it does not mean encouragement!"

This sentence does not make sense. Perhaps, if you expressed yourself more clearly, I might be able to argue your point with you.

"Where does it end? Smoking banned in your own home? In your car?"

Personally, I favour aggressive taxation of tobacco. I think that you ought to be allowed to smoke in your own home or car. If the government made this illegal, I would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you in defence of your liberties. But they are not making this illegal, and I rest content. If you don't like paying the taxes on tobacco, quit smoking. Then you won't have to pay them. It's your choice.

"This country has steadily been descending into a stasi-esque neo-fascist state for some time- it is the slow chipping away of small things such as smoking that add up."

I agree that, under the last government, civil liberties and respect for personal privacy were grievously eroded. However, taxation on smoking and the prohibition of smoking in enclosed public places do not entrench these processes. The former transfers some of the tax burden from non-smokers to smokers; the latter enhances peoples' freedom from smoke, at the expense of constraining their freedom to smoke.

"The campaign against smoking is to similar to Hitler's campaign against smoking in the rise of the Reich"

Mussolini was a fascist who made the trains run on time, ergo we should not make the trains run on time? Honestly, get a grip.

[Richard Craven]

"Sorry, you've lost me. What is cl, and how does it get reduced?"

cl = civil liberties, obviously. I guess it was my turn to be a little obtuse here.

"Of course this is an issue of civil liberties- I fail to understand how you cannot equate nanny-statism with a reduction in cl and personal choice."

The fact remains, this is just assertion, not argument. Discouraging people from smoking is a civil liberties issue, because ... ??