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Why Hasn't RFK Jr. Paused Drug Ads?
MEDPAGE TODAY ^ | April 3, 2025 | Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz, MD, MPH, and Jeffrey D. Klausner, MD, MPH

Posted on 04/05/2025 1:46:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway

Reports of over-prescribing and excess drug spending make regulation necessary

Drug commercials have become commonplace in the U.S. The average American watches more than nine drug advertisements a day, or more than 16 hours a yearopens in a new tab or window. Only two countries in the world, the U.S. and New Zealandopens in a new tab or window, permit direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription medications. Since the practice became routine in the 1990s, concerns have been voiced about how such marketing creates unhelpful and even harmful pressures on patients, doctors, and communities. And while those concerns are not new, recent reports of over-prescribingopens in a new tab or window and excess drug spendingopens in a new tab or window make it more important than ever to pause direct-to-consumer marketing.

The State of Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Ads

In 1962, spurred by the discovery that thalidomide, marketed in Europe as a sleeping pill, caused severe birth defectsopens in a new tab or window, Congress granted FDAopens in a new tab or window the authority to regulate drug advertisements. The FDA Office of Prescription Drug Promotion is responsible for ensuring that advertisements are truthful, accurate, and present a fair balanceopens in a new tab or window of risks and benefits. However, there are inherent challenges in regulating such advertisements.

While the secretary of HHS, the department that oversees the FDA, has the authority to ensure advertisements are reviewed before they are public, such review is not mandatory and often fails to happen in practice. One study showed that only 32% of drug commercialsopens in a new tab or window were reviewed by the FDA prior to being broadcast in 2004; at this time, just four people at FDA were responsible for reviewing pharmaceutical advertisements.

More recently, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy voiced his intentopens in a new tab or window to ban direct-to-consumer drug advertisements on television and elsewhere. How the Trump administration's recent mass federal firings will impact the Office of Prescription and Drug Promotion and if that will further slow the office's review of ads and complaintsopens in a new tab or window remains to be seen. Further, while the FDA regulates advertisements on public television and social mediaopens in a new tab or window, influencers promoting products on social media are not regulated. Taken together, excess drug promotion with limited oversight floods the public every day.

The Trouble With Drug Ads

Pharmaceutical companies who pay for direct-to-consumer drug marketing argue that it empowers patients in their relationships with their healthcare providersopens in a new tab or window. Yet, research has shown that drug advertising can lead to use of more expensive drugsopens in a new tab or window in place of lower-cost, generic alternatives, as well as less appropriate prescribing. Additionally, fewer than one in three drugsopens in a new tab or window advertised in 2016 were therapies that provided even moderate benefit over existing options. This means that drug advertisements, in numerous cases, lead to individuals paying more money without substantial benefits.

Studies have also shown that certain drug advertisements for the treatment of HIV resulted in a false sense of protection, leading to increased behaviorsopens in a new tab or window associated with spreading HIV. Drug advertisements can also lead to overprescribing and inappropriate useopens in a new tab or window of medication. While overprescribing can cause unnecessary side effects, the larger issue is that pharmaceutical companies typically market newer medications -- medications for which long-term side effects are not yet known. As a result, there are several more recent stories like that of thalidomide.

In 2004, rofecoxib (Vioxx), widely promoted as a pain reliever, was found to increase the risk of serious heart problemsopens in a new tab or window. In 2010, the appetite suppressant sibutramine (Meridia) was found to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokesopens in a new tab or window. Both drugs were voluntarily withdrawn from the market.

The Vioxx controversy led some in Congressopens in a new tab or window to call for limits to drug advertising, including a delay in advertising for a couple of years after the drug is introduced. Yet, advertising has not waned -- if anything, direct-to-consumer drug marketing has expanded. In 2020, pharmaceutical companies spent nearly $6.6 billionopens in a new tab or window on direct-to-consumer marketing alone, a 90% increaseopens in a new tab or window in spending compared to 2012.

A Balanced Compromise

It is important to note, however, that increasing public awareness of new medications can have benefits. Medication to prevent HIV, for example, must be taken within 72 hours of an exposureopens in a new tab or window to be effective, and public awareness is essential to ensure such medications are used. Additionally, individuals may learn about the conditions they have and the availability of treatments. But such information should come from doctors and community health advocates -- not drug companies.

Of course, we must also recognize that drug companies depend on sales to incentivize them to develop new therapies -- and we are not here to stunt innovation. A balanced compromise might be to restrict specific brand advertising directly to consumers but allow efforts to increase awareness and education around specific conditions or diseases. Meanwhile, it makes sense for pharmaceutical companies to continue direct advertisements to health professionals in medical journals and through expositions at medical meetings. However, given the harms and increased consumer costs of medications, Secretary Kennedy should act on his previously stated intent and take the opportunity to pause direct-to-consumer advertising now.

Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician and adult medicine specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Jeffrey D. Klausner, MD, MPH, is a professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, and a former CDC medical officer.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: apa; badadvertising; commercials; drugs; fcc; fda; hhs
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To: cymbeline

Other than horrifyingly dictating business that would be funny, because competitors would start buying ads for each other.


21 posted on 04/05/2025 3:06:40 PM PDT by discostu (like a dog being shown a card trick)
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To: nickcarraway

https://rumble.com/v6r8gwm-dr.-patrick-soon-shiong-youre-being-lied-to-about-cancer-how-its-caused-and.html?playlist_id=watch-history

This Doctor is trying to bring vaccines developed from T Cells, which increase the power of the immune system, not just help for vaccines that are targetting disease. It would boost the T cells to recognize diseases from all sources.


22 posted on 04/05/2025 3:31:49 PM PDT by Glad2bnuts
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To: nickcarraway
What? You don't like watching 50 diabetes patients singing and dancing in the streets, wondering which one is going to keel over from a heart attack?

-PJ

23 posted on 04/05/2025 3:44:56 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too ( * LAAP = Left-wing Activist Agitprop Press (formerly known as the MSM))
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To: nickcarraway

Everybody wants their pet thing done NOW. His priority list might be different for good reason. Let these people do their jobs.


24 posted on 04/05/2025 4:09:39 PM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The road is a dangerous place man, you can die out here...or worse. -Johnny Paycheck, 1980, Reno, NV)
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To: Larry Lucido

Yes, it makes me fearful to open a new tab or window.


25 posted on 04/05/2025 4:12:35 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: nickcarraway

I rarely watch Fox but it’s still better than its rivals. Wish they would find better sponsors, it’s unfortunate the grip Big Pharma has.


26 posted on 04/05/2025 4:18:43 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Inyo-Mono

Maybe by open a new tab they mean pop open a diet cola drink.


27 posted on 04/05/2025 5:29:55 PM PDT by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: Larry Lucido

Lol! I had a Tab once, eons ago, it tasted terrible.


28 posted on 04/05/2025 5:36:07 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: Larry Lucido

Maybe by open a new tab they mean pop open a diet cola drink.
___________________________________
Open a tab a diet pop. Throw the pop top (tab) on the ground so that barefoot kids can step on it and cut their toes.

No more Tab tabs from pop cans. Also, they outlawed smoking commericals. And burning your garbage.


29 posted on 04/05/2025 6:28:31 PM PDT by BarbM (Men who look at porn are impotent for God.)
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To: Political Junkie Too; nickcarraway
The commercials succeeded with me: whenever I see the ones with two guys cuddling or kissing I run for the nausea medicine.

Don't physicians have enough to deal with without patients nagging them for barely-tested drugs seen on commercials - some likely to be targets of class-action lawsuits in the future? It's not like doctors don't already have drug company representatives dogging them like lobbyists do our politicians.

If nothing else they should stop using purposely bad jingles that earworm the product name into people's heads whether they could use the drug or not. That's just evil.

30 posted on 04/05/2025 9:11:08 PM PDT by MikelTackNailer (NewRome Tacitus)
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To: cymbeline

this is a very interesting point


31 posted on 04/06/2025 2:24:04 AM PDT by thesligoduffyflynns (DONT DRINK & DRONE 🤓 HAVE A NICE DAY 😀 )
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To: discostu

Remember cigarettes?

Alcohol?

Of course the government can end drug ads.


32 posted on 04/06/2025 3:11:47 AM PDT by Chickensoup
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To: Chickensoup

Cigarettes was done via FCC rule and didn’t apply to cable, satellite, print or the internet. And even the broadcast ban didn’t stop the Winston Cup.

The hard liquor thing was actually self imposed. And ended in 1996 when Seagram decided it was silly and bought ad time on cable.

No the government canNOT end drug ads.


33 posted on 04/06/2025 6:24:31 AM PDT by discostu (like a dog being shown a card trick)
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To: nickcarraway

Bates v. State Bar of Arizona &
Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council

Corporations also have 1st Amendment rights.

If you can’t prove that drug adverts UNIVERSALLY AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION cause doctors to over-prescribe (or other deleterious consequences), then the industry’s 1st Amendment rights must be respected.


34 posted on 04/06/2025 8:24:26 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: discostu

No the government canNOT end drug ads.

Cigarettes was done via FCC rule

evidently they can


35 posted on 04/06/2025 8:46:21 AM PDT by Chickensoup
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To: Chickensoup

And you studiously ignore that the FCC ONLY governs broadcast TV and radio. Not cable. Not satellite. Not the internet. And not print.

And let’s focus on that having anything to do with print advertising for a minute. Because once upon a time cigarette ads were ALL OVER print. Every magazine in the country had a dozen cigarette ads. Including the TV Guide. Hmm. Interesting when you think about.

Then of course there’s NASCAR. While the cigarette companies could put ADS on broadcast TV that didn’t stop them from sponsoring the NASCAR title, and individual teams. So you could have the Marlboro car (painted up to look like a pack of reds) competing for the Winston Cup. And while NASCAR might have moved away from the Winston Cup there’s still the teams.

So no, the evidence clearly shows that even when the government can declare a PARTIAL ban (FCC regulated things only) and it can’t actually make a ban that matters.


36 posted on 04/06/2025 8:59:25 AM PDT by discostu (like a dog being shown a card trick)
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To: discostu

“Other than horrifyingly dictating business that would be funny, because competitors would start buying ads for each other”

Indeed it would be horrifying. Took me a while to figure out your 2nd observation. Good one!


37 posted on 04/07/2025 4:38:28 AM PDT by cymbeline
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