Throngs of New Yorkers looking to shed pounds — be it five or 50 — scooped up bottles of a new, nonprescription diet pill called Alli over the weekend.

Although drugstore aisles are well-stocked with self-proclaimed weight-loss pills, such as TrimSpa and Xenadrine, Alli is the only one to have won approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The product hit shelves on Friday and while sales numbers for the weekend are not yet available, New Yorkers seem to be rushing out to buy it.

A pharmacist at Windsor Pharmacy in Midtown Manhattan, Maha Omar, said the store initially purchased 10 boxes of Alli, but reordered about two dozen more on Saturday after initial demand was strong. The store has sold about 20 boxes, each of which includes a month’s supply.

“We are getting a lot of calls,” Ms. Omar told The New York Sun yesterday. “There’s definitely a huge buzz about it.”

Ms. Omar said most of those looking to buy Alli are women who are not obese, but looking to lose between 20 and 25 pounds.
Alli is a lower-dose formula of Roche Pharmaceuticals’s prescription diet drug Xenical, which has been on the market since 1999. The feeding frenzy for Alli has some dieticians warning that the drug is no silver bullet. A dietician who practices in Midtown, Jennifer Andrus, said her patients who have tried Xenical “haven’t found it to be incredibly effective.”

Even so, New Yorkers don’t seem to be deterred.

“A lot of people are asking for it,” a pharmacist at King’s Pharmacy in TriBeCa, Harry Loo, said, gesturing toward a display case where 90-pill Alli “Starter Kits” were on sale for $59.95.

According to GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical company that’s selling it, the new-to-the-market supplement blocks the digestion of some dietary fat, which can lead to weight loss. The company also stresses that the product works in conjunction with a low-fat diet and exercise.

In New York, the pharmaceutical giant prefaced the June 15 debut of Alli with an ambitious marketing campaign that included advertisements on television and on taxicabs. It also held a promotional exhibit at Union Square.

A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, Lori Lukas, said yesterday that the company’s exhibit in Union Square attracted more than 10,000 visitors during the three weeks it was opened. She also said the company’s Web site has received more than 1.7 million visitors since its debut in early April.

At a Duane Reade on Columbus Avenue at 79th Street, customers had been coming in all of last week looking for the drug, though it only hit shelves on Friday. At Thomas Drugs, several blocks south, a sales manager, Bleranda Spahiu, said the pharmacist had placed an order for Alli based on dozens of customer requests.

The dietician Ms. Andrus said the drug’s impact is often minimal when consumed with a low-fat diet because the product is designed only to block a portion of the fat being consumed. She said when taken with a high-fat diet, side effects — which can include abdominal pain, loose stools, and gas with oily discharge — can be agonizing.

“I do worry that anyone will have access to it now,” an Upper East Side dietician who is a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, Elisa Zied, said. “I would never recommend weight-loss medication to someone who needs to lose five or 10 pounds.
Ms. Zied said diet drugs should be used as a last resort for those with obesity-related illnesses, such as Type II Diabetes.