Where to Buy Smoking Cessation Medications Safely Online For the Great American Smokeout
November 17 is the 36th Great American Smokeout encouraging smokers to use the date to quit smoking, sponsored by the American Cancer Society. It’s a great time to quit smoking, but consumers need to avoid buying counterfeit smoking cessation medication from fake online pharmacies.
Not all online sources for smoking cessation aids are legitimate sources. Learn more about where to buy and where not to buy here.
November 17 is the 36th Great American Smokeout encouraging smokers to use the date to quit smoking, sponsored by the American Cancer Society. It’s a great time to quit smoking, but consumers need to avoid buying counterfeit smoking cessation medication from fake online pharmacies.
Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the US, yet more than 46 million American still smoke, says The American Cancer Society (ACS). However more than half of them have attempted to quit in the last year. The Great American Smokeout encourages them to try again.
Quitting smoking is hard, and experts say that most successful quitters take more than one attempt at quitting to do it.
Because smoking is both a mental and physical habit, ACS recommends that quitters change personal habits, find emotional support in friends and family and use medicine. Smokers can try nicotine replacement therapy or other medications prescribed by doctors, such as bupropion and varenicline.
Bupropion, known by the brand names Zyban or Wellbutrin, is a prescription anti-depressant that reduces symptoms of nicotine withdrawal and does not contain nicotine. Varenicline, branded as Chantix, is a newer medication developed to help people stop smoking that works by interfering with the nicotine receptors in the brain, says ACS. Both medications require doctor’s supervision and a prescription.
Enthusiastic soon-to-be ex-smokers might dive into purchasing some cessation aids online, but here their enthusiasm should be tempered with caution. Searching for those medications online turns up many results, and only a small fraction of those results are legitimate. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, NABP, has found that 96% of all so-called pharmacies online are not safe for consumers, and are not legitimate pharmacies.
Unfortunately bupropion and varenicline are on many fake online pharmacy websites, available for purchase without a prescription requirement. From the NABP’s own Not Recommended Sites list, a sampling of websites all sold at least one of the two medications. As NABP states, “Ordering drugs from these web sites puts you and your family at risk.” They are out of compliance with state and federal laws or NABP patient safety and pharmacy practice standards.
In addition to potentially suffering serious health consequences from purchasing from a fake internet pharmacy, many of these websites also provided other unintended side effects to your life, like computer viruses for your home computer and data theft.
If you really want to quit smoking, make sure the medication you get to help you quit is legit, so it really can provide smoking cessation support.
Finding a legitimate online pharmacy to purchase smoking cessation medication from is as easy as going to the NABP’s VIPPS page which lists accredited online pharmacies which meet state and federal laws and regulations as well as NABP safety criteria. Be sure to look at the NABP list and for the VIPPS seal on online pharmacy websites.