Is Generic Viagra Illegal?
Most medications have a brand name version and a generic version. A generic drug contains the same active ingredient/s found in its brand name counterpart.
The active ingredient of Viagra is sildenafil citrate. Pfizer Inc is the only pharmaceutical company that holds worldwide patents on sildenafil citrate, and so no other manufacturer can make sildenafil citrate and sell it under any brand name as generic Viagra until Pfizer’s patents expire (most of them expire in 2011–2014).
As an example, Pfizer has recently won a Viagra patent dispute in Canada, where the Federal Court of Canada prohibited Novopharm (a Canadian generic pharmaceutical company) from making generic Viagra until Pfizer’s patent expires. (Source)
But many bad companies and dealers have been making lots of generic Viagra, most of which comes from India, China, and other third world countries were law enforcement is limp.
In addition to being illegal, a lot of the generic Viagra sold online for low prices was found to contain unknown, unapproved, and/or dangerous ingredients, which may lead to serious side effects or even death in some cases.
But does it work?
Yes, there are still a few “good” manufacturers who make “decent” generic Viagra (sildenafil citrate tablets), which works the same way as brand Viagra.
My Ever-Growing Spam Folder
Even though I am very careful not to post my email address publicly, each and every day I get tens to hundreds of spam messages. Most of it (probably more than 90%) is about Viagra, Cialis and other penis pills.
The titles of those emails usually range from funny to silly to stupid. It looks like spammers are coming up with ways to bypass spam filters. One of the stupidest and most detectable ways spammers use to try to fool email filters is using misspellings of the main keywords in their message. For example, I get tons of emails with titles like: Buy Viagara and Cialias, Cheaap Viaqra, Che@pest Viaggra, etc.
Only less than 1% of the spam gets through the filters into my inbox and the rest gets automatically junked.
I am still very amazed that some (or many) people are ignorant and naive enough to click on the links they get through spammy emails and actually buy whatever the spammer is selling. So, the question now is: who is more stupid, and whose fault is it, spammers or those who fall for it and pay the spammers (by buying the products promoted in spam emails)?