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“Cody was never mentally ill nor did he have ongoing problems,” Kate Miller of Queensbury, N.Y., says. “I would not have given my son a drug that causes depression for a simple allergy. Who would? But my choice was taken away by a company that buried the risks.”

Cody Miller killed himself 17 days after being prescribed the asthma and allergy drug Singulair, says Miller.

The first week Cody, who played high school football, took Singulair he experienced cramps in his legs. The second week he “was sweating profusely and couldn’t calm down. He was very agitated, anxious, really having a hard time.”  On the last day of his life, Cody’s eyes appeared sleep-deprived, Miller recounts, and he said, “Sometimes you feel like you can’t take it.” After taking a nap on the porch while the family ordered pizza for dinner, Cody went upstairs to shower, but instead took his own life. Cody, 15, was the Millers’ only child.    

Almost 9 million people, many under 16, used Singulair in less than two years according to recent FDA data and four deaths have been linked to it. World sales of Merck’s blockbuster drug were about $5 billion a year until 2012 when its patent expired and it was the U.S.’s  seventh best-selling drug. But last month, data from an FDA committee were presented that acknowledge “safety concerns” about “neuropsychiatric adverse events, including suicide and suicide attempts” with the drug. Like Vioxx, Fosamax, Paxil and Ambien, now that the patent has run out on Singulair, its dangers are being acknowledged.