Oooooh, you’re in troublllllllle

The FDA is “taking action” against Walgreens for selling tobacco to minors just a bit too often. Which technically means “ever” but in this case means “22 percent of its inspected stores having illegally sold tobacco products to minors.”

Just because we can doesn’t mean we will

Yes, the FDA has approved a heck of a lot of new drugs in the past couple of years — more than 1,600, in fact. But what you don’t hear is that 43 percent of them have never been sold to patients, and that means prices aren’t coming down.

“It’s a real problem because we’re not getting all the expected competition,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said.

Last year’s flu vaccine did a lot more good than you realize

From a study in Clinical Infectious Diseases, which found that, although the 2017-2018 vaccine was only 38 percent effective, it still saved a lot of people:

We estimated that influenza vaccination prevented 7.1 million illnesses, 3.7 million medical visits, 109,000 hospitalizations, and 8,000 deaths.

Swallow that robot

A group of researchers from M.I.T., Harvard, and Novo Nordisk have developed a set of tiny robots that can be swallowed, and which then inject medication:

The device works by attaching itself to the inside of the stomach then injecting a payload through the gastric wall. […] a tiny, spring-loaded needle is released once the sugar glass that surrounds it is dissolved by acid in the stomach.

Thinking about owning your own pharmacy?

Our friends at NCPA have a workshop coming up. (It’s in Charlotte, N.C., which isn’t too far.)

It’s an intensive three-day event for pharmacists considering pharmacy ownership or current owners looking to polish their management skills. It’s a soup-to-nuts crash course on pharmacy ownership, whether you’re starting from the ground up, purchasing an existing store, or expanding to become a multi-store owner.

J&J goes transparent

Johnson & Johnson will be the first major pharmaceutical company to start adding drug prices — list and out-of-pocket — to its television ads.

“We’re starting with our most widely prescribed medicine so we can assess how the price and cost information is received by a broad range of people. We will take into account patient and consumer feedback in guiding roll-out to additional medicines we advertise on TV.

TIL*: Insulin edition

You can buy human insulin at Walmart for about $25 a vial without a prescription. (Note: this is human insulin, which is a little different than the insulin analog that most diabetics take.)

* “Today I learned” Honestly, it’s embarrassing to have to explain this to you kids

Just keep paying, just keep paying….

“Consistent payments from drug companies influence physician prescribing practices”