Pfizer Inc. will soon begin selling Viagra directly from its website, a first for the drug industry first, according to the Associated Press.
Embarrassed men in search of the little blue pill will no longer have to come face-to-face with a pharmacist, but will still need a prescription to receive the drug used to treat erectile dysfunction. And to make the deal even more enticing, Pfizer is offering three free pills with the first order and 30 percent off the second; pretty good, considering the cost is $25 per-pill.
The move to online sales is a dramatic departure from the usual pharmaceutical company method of distribution: selling their products to wholesalers who then distribute them further to hospitals, doctors' offices and pharmacies. With Pfizer's new tactic, the company is bypassing all of that to sell their product directly to patients.
But the pharmaceutical company also hopes the new strategy will help it crackdown on counterfeit sales of Pfizer medications made online.
Online pharmacies are becoming increasingly prevalent and offer consumers counterfeit renditions of Viagra without a prescription for up to a 95 percent discount.
Pfizer's latest move could encourage other pharmaceutical companies, who are also affected by counterfeiters, to follow suit — if their plan unfolds smoothly.
"If it works, everybody will hop on the train," said Les Funtleyder, a health care strategist at Poliwogg, a private equity fund.
Counterfeit drugs present more risk than consumers realize, according to experts like Matthew Bassiur, vice president of global security at Pfizer.
Patients seeking medications online are "playing Russian roulette," Bassiur said.
"The factories are deplorable. I've seen photographs of these places. You wouldn't even want to walk in them, let alone ingest anything made in them."
But it's not just the public safety concerns that are the driving force behind Pfizer's latest move. The company also loses billions of dollars in sales each year to counterfeit drug production of not just Viagra, but other medications as well.