To the aid of smokers wanting to quit comes another drug
One day 12 years ago, for no good reason really, Priyanka Basu lit her first cigarette. “I had always liked the smell of cigarette smoke,” says this 35–year–old textile designer based in Mumbai. “I wanted to see what it felt like.” What began as a casual experiment in 1996 is now a serious habit that Basu, mother of a six–year–old daughter, knows she should kick but can’t quite get around to doing. Also an aspiring actor, Basu says she’s managed to improve her life in many ways by adhering to a diet and learning reiki, a spiritual practice that its followers say helps cure disease. “Smoking is playing havoc with my otherwise healthy lifestyle,” she says.

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Around the same time that Basu got drawn into smoking, Jotham Coe, a scientist at New York’s Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest drug maker, began work on a drug that has the potential to help people like Basu quit smoking. Coe – now an ex–smoker, who lost his father, uncle and aunt to lung cancer from smoking – and his team at Pfizer’s research labs in Groton, Connecticut, first synthesised varenicline in February 1997. Nearly a decade later and after extensive trials on 5,000 smokers, Pfizer launched the prescription drug, branded Chantix, in the US in 2006. In those trials, smokers were found to be twice as likely to quit on Chantix as on competing drug Zyban from UK’s GlaxoSmithKline, and four times more likely to do so than if they were on a placebo.

Chantix, a nicotine–free product, works by binding to a receptor in the brain that is linked to the release of dopamine, a chemical responsible for the pleasure derived from smoking. This prevents nicotine from binding to that receptor but still fools the brain into releasing some amount of dopamine without actually getting nicotine. This also eases withdrawal symptoms, Pfizer says. Recent market data from Pfizer shows Chantix to be the most prescribed of all available smoking cessation solutions in the US. That includes nicotine–replacement products such as patches and gum.

Last month, Pfizer brought the drug to India – here it’s called Champix – hoping to do an encore. India has the second–largest number of smokers in the world, after China, with 120 million Indians estimated to light up. The rising awareness about the ill effects of smoking especially among the urban, educated middle–class suggests that conceivably many more would be trying or wanting to quit. “India is truly the big 800–pound gorilla as far as smoking is concerned,” says Anjan Chatterjee, medical director of Pfizer Inc. “Champix offers a fresh opportunity to smokers who have previously failed quit attempts.” Champix will set a smoker back by Rs 9,652 over a 12–week course, an amount that might initially raise eyebrows but pales in comparison to what many smokers would spend if they continued to smoke, and in the event of a smoking–related illness.