The highly anticipated weight-loss drug rimonabant has been available for purchase by prescription in Britain since June 28, 2006, and as of April 2007, Sanofi's Acomplia® was available in more than a dozen European countries, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

Rimonabant is not, at this point, on the market in the United States (where Sanofi will market it, if approved, as Zimulti®) -- and is not expected to be available in U.S. pharmacies until at least late 2007. It also has not been approved for sale in Canada.

Generic versions of rimonabant also are now being sold in India by at least four Indian pharmaceutical companies.

People outside the countries where rimonabant has been approved for sale seeking to buy the diet drug can presently do so in one of three ways.

1. You can go to a doctor in a country where the sale of rimonabant has been approved (ie, the U.K.), and if the doctor agrees that you would benefit from taking rimonabant, 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 rimonabant has been approved (ie, the U.K.) Some of these are already 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 rimonabant has NOT been approved (ie, Canada). Some of these also are advertising on the internet. While the procedure for ordering the drug is similar to ordering from a country where rimonabant is legally for sale, we have no idea how third-country pharmacies (ie, Canadian pharmacies) are filling these orders.

The European Commission publicly issued a warning to consumers on March 27th -- 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 Rimonabant Report offers no endorsement of any online pharmacies, and encourages anyone thinking of buying rimonabant from an ad they see on this site to first read this ad alert.

When rimonabant 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 rimonabant.

There now are so many sources of rimonabant, 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.

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 rimonabant via the internet could have serious health consequences.