Miss America to keynote Georgia Pharmacy Convention!

That’s right — Miss America, Camille Schrier, will be the featured keynote speaker at this year’s Georgia Pharmacy Convention in Asheville!

In case you missed it, Miss America is also student pharmacist at Virginia Commonwealth University and an outspoken champion of women in science, technology, and engineering as well as an advocate for opioid safety.

Check out the details in the press release, and mark your calendars for the 2020 Georgia Pharmacy Convention: June 18-21 at the Omni Grove Park Inn!

It’s expensive to smoke in Georgia

When you take into account the cost of cigarettes, the average cost of extra medical care, and the lost days of work, smoking costs the average Georgia smoker a total of $1.2 million over a lifetime.

That’s $87,304 out of pocket just for cigarettes and cigars — the second highest amount in the country.

Then add the extra medical care it costs: $124,236 — the third most in the country.

When it’s all totalled, only North Carolinians spend more to light up, according to the latest survey from WalletHub. (New Yorkers spend the least.)

Belviq cancer risk

Have patients on Belviq (lorcaserin)? The FDA warns it may carry an increased risk of cancer.

Health care professionals should consider if the benefits of taking lorcaserin are likely to exceed the potential risks.

Pharmacists wary of Amazon’s PillPack

Some independent pharmacists are reporting patients receiving calls from PillPack trying to get them to switch pharmacies — and maybe not being clear about it.

“We’ve had approximately 3 to 5 customers who experienced this about 8 to 12 months ago. Each customer said that they received a call from some company asking them about their medications. […] “They each seemed to think it was a call from the insurance company going over their medications. None of the customers realized that they were transferring their medications to another pharmacy.”

Speed vs safety

Over the past 40 years or so, the FDA has gotten less strict with its standards for drug approvals. That means more meds on the market, but there’s also concern it may lead to “an erosion of the ‘FDA approved’ brand.”

Lilly offers more insulin at half price

Eli Lilly said it will begin selling two more versions of its insulin products at half price: Humalog Junior KwikPen and Humalog Mix75/25. The new, lower-cost versions are expected to debut in April.

The company already started selling its Humalog injection (under its Insulin Lispro brand) at half price.

Diabetics are not impressed.

“The two pen types that were added to Lilly’s half-price offerings today will undoubtedly lead to positive headlines for Lilly, but these pens are not widely used in the type 1 diabetes community and will do little good for patients if they are unable to obtain them.”

Research and development

If you were worried that drug makers weren’t spending enough money on advertising, fear not. Thanks to a big push by AbbVie for Humira, 2019 ad spending by pharmaceutical companies was on par with — and in fact slightly higher than — the previous year: $3.79 billion with a B. (Abbvie spent almost half a billion bucks on Humira TV marketing alone.)

Nothing to see here, citizen

Anyone who’s read any science-fiction knows where this is headed:

Keep on doin’ what you’re doin’

After a 10-year study involving almost 3,000 women, researchers at the University College London found a simple way for women to hold off menopause. The study was published in Royal Society Open Science.