New Advertising Trend: Fake "Public Service" Ads

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Pfizer has produced a great example of stealth advertising with its commercial promoting a Web site called MyTimeToQuit.com. The ad has the look and feel of a public service announcement, and mentions neither Pfizer, nor the popular smoking cessation drug it promotes -- Chantix (varenicline). The ad represents a growing trend in drug advertising called "help-seeking ads," which don't mention a drug by name, but instead address the condition the drug is meant to treat, and then drive viewers to a toll-free 800 number or a Web site that offers an option to learn more about a prescription drug meant to treat the condition. It is a sneaky, but legal way to advertise drugs that have particularly bad side effects, since avoiding mentioning the drug by name lets the company off the hook for listing its bad side effects in the ad, too, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules. Chantix has some serious side effects, according to an alert the agency issued on Chantix, including "serious neuropsychiatric symptoms," like changes in behavior, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and completed suicide.

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Pfizer's part in Big Cig

Pfizer's Sorbitol, now in the hands of Archer Daniels Midland and Hoffman la Roche, is a synthetic sweetener on the long list of untested, often toxic, additives from which cigarette makers concoct their secret recipes.
Pfizer has never been called to respond to its part in making ordinarily rough tobacco smoke appealing to young people...or to answer the question of how it knew that Sorbitol, when burned, was safe in this use.

Pfizer's smoking cessation drug is a way for the firm to make money again off of Guinea pigged smokers. This might be called "The Zeneca Ploy". Zeneca was a manufacturer of pesticides for use on tobacco...again, without a shred of study of the actual or probable health effects of the residues (alone, or in combo with other toxins and carcinogens) on smokers....and with no listing of the residues on ingredients labels, there being no ingredients labels required by industry-allied law makers. Zeneca, perhaps fearing embarrassing exposures of its role in the hated cigarette cartel, has now gotten out of the "agricultural chemical" business.
Now Zeneca profits with cancer "cure" drugs sold to those who may well be victims of its own tobacco pesticide residues....that is, along with any number of other pesticide residues from among the 450 pesticides that are registered by the U.S. for use on tobacco.
To add injury to injury, Zeneca's Tamaxofen "cancer cure" is itself reported to be a carcinogen.

For-profit health insurers profit by their large holdings in not only cigarette manufacturers but also makers of tobacco pesticides and perhaps most suppliers of of non-tobacco cigarette ingredients. Insurers profit from smokers yet again by charging them more for policies...and by other investments in pharmaceuticals that make "cessation" drugs, patented nicotine-delivery products, or medicines that treat the many illnesses caused by, or exacerbated by, the plethora of non-tobacco cigarette adulterants, most notably, the dioxin-creating chlorine substances (pesticide residues and the chlorine-bleached paper).

It's too bad Pfizer can't come up with a drug to be given to cigarette makers, ingredients' suppliers, and public officials that will lead to Cessation of Adulterating Tobacco and poisoning unwitting smokers with untested and known toxic and cancer-causing substances.