Pfizer Running Stealth Chantix TV Ads

Many of you have likely seen the Chantix TV ads in the past, the ones with the tortoise and the hare in them. Those ads disappeared not long after New Year's. In the wake of massive bad publicity around use of the stop smoking drug Chantix in some people, Pfizer, its maker, is now running stealth Chantix ads on TV. It's amazing to me that the company considers the name of its star-crossed drug to currently be so tainted that it won't even mention it on TV.

I saw one of these ads last night during the "Tonight Show." The ad directs people who want to find out how to quit smoking to a website called mytimetoquit.com (which sounds oddly like other stealth pharma websites such as isitreallydepression.com). There is no mention in the TV spot of any drug, but I suspected something was up and went to the website.

Sure enough, there's an option on the splash page for "a prescription treatment option to help you stop smoking." Click on that and you are taken to a page where pretty much your only option to learn more is to be directed to Chantix.com. Where you can again meet the tortoise and the hare.

Unless you've been a tortoise in recent months, then you already know that Chantix has been banned for use by pilots, air traffic controllers, truckers and commercial bus drivers and that it's the subject of a public health advisory by the FDA due to links between use of the drug and suicides, suicidality, cases of medication-induced depression, erratic behavior, traffic accidents, convulsions and so on.

Maybe the stealth ad needs to come with a disclaimer about what might happen if you page through the website and end up taking the drug in question.