Chantix Drug Recall Eerily Parallels Current Health Crisis

Pfizer just announced that it is recalling all lots of Chantix due to high levels of cancer-causing carcinogens called nitrosamines that have been found to be present in the pills.

Mind you, the FDA approved Chantix back in May of 2006 as a prescription medication to help adults quit smoking. It was deemed to be safe and effective for the public. Now, after years of study and research, they discovered that this is not actually the case. But after how many have suffered ill effects from taking a drug they believed to be safe?

This interesting announcement begs some questions about FDA approved drugs and forcibly medicating the public under the guise of the greater good.

Per the seemingly omniscient CDC, smoking is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide and kills more that 480,000 Americans yearly, including more than 41,000 from secondhand smoke exposure. For every person who dies from smoking, at least 30 people (or 14.4 million people) develop serious lifelong health issues from smoking, which means that death isn’t the only devastating outcome to be feared from smoking. Serious lifelong health conditions must also be a considered factor. Sounds kind of like another “condition” we’re dealing with right now, doesn’t it?

In the United States, smoking related illnesses cost insurance companies more than $225 billion yearly in direct medical care, and the country loses more than $156 billion in productivity due to smoking related premature death and illness. Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, various lung diseases, diabetes, COPD, and increases personal risk for tuberculosis, various eye diseases, various immune system diseases, and even erectile dysfunction. So one could argue that smoking puts an undue strain on the medical and healthcare system and the economy. Again, sounds surprisingly familiar, right?

One could even argue that choosing to smoke despite being aware of these potentially devastating health issues and being aware of steps that could be taken to mitigate the risk of those health issues should necessarily preclude the person from medical treatment due to their irresponsible health decisions that allowed them to be at greater risk of these preventable illnesses, which subsequently puts undue strain on the healthcare system and takes up beds that could be used for real emergencies.

Does all this sound eerily familiar? Like I could be describing an entirely different health condition?

Now just imagine if our government had forced every American to take Chantix when it became available and was FDA approved, whether they actually needed it or not, because it appeared at the time to be a safe and effective way of preventing 480,000 yearly deaths and 14.4 million lifelong illnesses, averting healthcare system overwhelm, and warding off hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary medical expenditures or lost income. And it would all be for the greater good, of course.

And now that it’s being recalled due to serious health and safety concerns, what if hundreds of millions of people had been forced to take it because of all the above mentioned considerations?

Seems incredibly applicable for our current situation, doesn’t it.