"Shoe" Comic Strip Spoofs Pfizer's Chantix (unbranded) Side Effects

My Sunday newspaper comics section prominently features the "Shoe" comic strip on the front page. It's a favorite of mine. Today's Shoe spoofs the side effects of Rx drugs -- specifically a smoking-cessation drug. Although it doesn't mention any brand names, Chantix is the only non-nicotine drug approved by the FDA for smoking cessation currently available by prescription.

Here's the comic, which I pinned on my "Fun Pharma Images" Pinterest board:

Source: shoecomics.com via Pharma on Pinterest

According to the Shoe web site "The strip's namesake, Shoe, is based on legendary North Carolina journalist Jim Shumaker, Jeff MacNelly's first newspaper boss. P. Martin Shoemaker is a grouchy, cigar-smoking, newspaperbird with a tough side and an even tougher other side."

Even tough birds, it seems, can suffer drug side effects. Shoe mentions "chest pains, bad breath and a hacking cough" as his main side effects. This is funny in context of the quit smoking indication but Chantix has been linked to a much more serious side effect: suicide. For more on that see "Chantix May Be More Dangerous Than Smoking!" and the chart below:

Source: pharmamkting.blogspot.com via Pharma on Pinterest

Of course, Shoe may be taking some other drug such as a generic version of Zyban.

The question remains: would Shoe be better off smoking his cigars or taking a medication to quit?

I'm not a cigar smoker, but I wouldn't inhale cigar smoke if I were. But there's the secondary effects of inhaling the smoke that's released into the surrounding air by cigars.

In any case, Shoe would be a terrible boss to work for whether he quit smoking or not!