On Oct. 23, 2008, the European Medicines Agency recommended that Acomplia (rimonabant) -- which had been available for purchase by prescription in Britain since June 28, 2006 -- be withdrawn from the market throughout the European Union.

Sanofi-Aventis subsequently temporarily suspended sale of Acomplia in Europe, and said it was going to take similar action in a variety of countries in Latin America and Asia where it also has been available.

The drug, which was to be marketed in the United States as Zimulti, was never approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Our current assumption is that Acomplia is not available anywhere. If you are aware of countries where it continues to be sold, please email us this information.

People seeking to buy Acomplia have been doing it in one of three ways.

1. You can go to a doctor in a country where the sale of Acomplia has been approved (ie, the U.K.), and if the doctor agrees that you would benefit from taking Acomplia, the doctor will write out a prescription. You would then take the prescription to a pharmacy, and purchase the diet drug.

2. You can contact an online pharmacy in a country where the sale of Acomplia is approved. Some of these have been advertising on the internet. Typically, you will be asked to fill out a brief medical questionnaire for review by a doctor who will then decide whether to issue a prescription.

If you reside in the country where the pharmacy is located, the drug will be expressed to you and typically will reach you in a couple of days.

If you reside in a country where the drug has not been approved (ie, the U.S.), the online pharmacy will mail you the drug -- typically in an unmarked package -- in an effort to prevent its interception by customs. The drug typically will reach you in ten days to two weeks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes the position that it is illegal for a foreign pharmacy to ship drugs not approved by the FDA into the United States. Other countries may have similar laws. In practice, very few shipments are intercepted -- and some online pharmacies send another package in the rare instances that this occurs.

3. You can contact an online pharmacy in a country where the sale of Acomplia has NOT been approved. Some of these also are advertising on the internet. While the procedure for ordering the drug was similar to ordering from a country where Acomplia was legally for sale, we have no idea how third-country pharmacies were filling these orders.

The European Commission publicly issued a warning to consumers on March 27, 2006 -- when Sanofi was still not authorized to sell Acomplia anywhere -- that fake versions of the drug already were being sold over the internet.

"Patients who buy unlicensed and counterfeit or illicit copies of rimonabant may be putting their health at risk," the European Commission said.

The Acomplia Report offers no endorsement of any online pharmacies, and encourages anyone thinking of buying Acomplia from an ad they see on this site to first read this consumer alert.

When Acomplia first came on the market, as a service to our readers we attempted to share both positive and negative feedback from fellow readers about sellers of Acomplia.

There now are so many sources of Acomplia, and we receive so many conflicting reports (including some, we fear, from proxies of the seller), that we have decided to end our efforts to sort out the good merchants from the bad.

Beyond worries about counterfeit drugs, many doctors are concerned that as Acomplia becomes more widely available, it will be pedaled by unscrupulous internet retailers in the same manner as Viagra.

Some analysts believe that for every legal prescription of Viagra, another 20 are sold over the Internet.

Given the growth in recent years in eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, doctors worry that readily accessible Acomplia via the internet could have serious health consequences.