More than 1,200 people have filed Chantix lawsuits against pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer over its side effects that can be severe. Randall Sloan, one of these side effect victims, filed suit in an Alabama court in March of 2010 after he was prescribed Chantix in December 2007. A year and a half later, the Food and Drug Administration began to require that Chantix carry a “black box” warning, which is the highest warning it can administer, to warn the consumers about the potential side effects of the drug. The lawsuit claimed that Sloan suffered from “anxiety, depression, aggression, mania, psychosis, erratic behavior, and hospitalization on or about March 2008.”
Hundreds of other Chantix users have made similar claims in their lawsuits, which have been consolidated through multidistrict litigation, a process that combines similar lawsuits into one that is more streamlined and passes through the judicial system more efficiently. It is similar to a class action lawsuit. US District Judge Inge Prytz Johnson is overseeing this lawsuit in the Northern District of Alabama.
Although the first lawsuit will not take place until 2012, many lawsuits have already been filed. Most claim that Pfizer neglected to test the drug on people with a history of people with psychological problems. This is especially an issue because there is a high rate of people with issues such as depression and anxiety who are also smokers. Sloan, who is a former Pfizer employee, says that Dr. Daniel Seidman, who is the director of Smoking Cessation Services at Columbia University, has said that “two out of three” smokers that he sees have a psychiatric or mood problem. Pfizer admits that they did not test people with symptoms of major psychological problems, but people with these problems were prescribed the drug anyway. Now, many of them are filing Chantix-related lawsuits.
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