Legal, Half-Price Viagra Goes On Sale In U.S. Next Week

Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant behind the popular erectile dysfunction (ED) medication Viagra, will start selling a half-price, generic version of its drug in the United States on Monday, December 11, in an attempt to head off competition from other drug makers in the wake of the Food and Drug Administration allowing generic Viagra finally to become legal in the U.S.—almost two decades after the revolutionary drug was first approved. The new Pzifer generic Viagra will be sold as a “little white pill,” differentiating it from the now-iconic blue diamond-shaped tablet instantly recognizable as the original Viagra by consumers. The reported price for a single 100 milligram pill? Just $32.50—half of the current $65 retail price of a 100 mg blue Viagra dose. The Pfizer generic Viagra will be sold under the drug’s actual name, sildenafil citrate. Currently, only one other company is licensed in the U.S. to make and sell sildenafil cirate as a generic form of Viagra. That company, the Israeli pharma firm Teva, plans to begin marketing its version of the drug this month, but has not yet announced how much it plans to charge for each dose of sildenafil citrate. According to a report by The Associated Press, however, the Pfizer and Teva generic Viagra are expected to be only the first in what will certainly become a wide variety of generic erectile dysfunction drugs, an anticipated market flood that could drive consumer prices of sildenafil citrate down as much as 90 percent. In the United Kingdom, where generic Viagra has been available legally for several years—as it has in several European counties—not only is a version of Viagra about to become significantly cheaper than even Pfizer’s “little white pill,” for the first time the drug will be available over the counter, without a doctor’s prescription. Using the brand name “Viagra Connect,” Pfizer plans to start selling 50 milligram tablets of sildenafil citrate in foil packets of four for £19.99, which converts to approximately $25 in U.S. cash. In other words, a 100 milligram dose of Viagra in the over-the counter packages will go for just $12.50. That’s a full 20 bucks less than the U.S. generic Viagra that hits pharmacies on December 11.  Pfizer reportedly raked in $1.6 billion in sales of Viagra last year alone.