Under current law, Viagra and all the other PDE5 inhibitors are available only by prescription in the United States. However, reports from the United Kingdom indicate that country’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has recommended that the drug be made available over the counter.
It would be sold in packets of six tablets of 50 milligrams each. Viagra has been facing generic competition in the United Kingdom since mid-2013, so if it succeeds in its bid to take Viagra over the counter, it would be another way of competing with the generic versions of the drug.
And the United Kingdom is not the first market in which Pfizer has made a bid to market an OTC formulation of its pioneering drug. Several years earlier, Pfizer sought approval from the European Medicine Agency to do the same throughout the nations of the European Union. However, it withdrew that application when the agency voiced concerns about the idea. If the OTC scheme is successful for Pfizer in the United Kingdom, it might make a similar bid to introduce an OTC version of the drug in The United States.