IOW, the lame-ass doctors are gonna start prescribing the pills only in a manner consistent with their intended purpose. We need serious prescription reform:
Ban all the prescription-medicine television advertising. Doctors should prescribe a drug because it is their medical opinion that their patients need the drug, not because the patient saw an advertisement.
Ban instant prescriptions, such as over the internet or over the telephone, from doctors who have not previously met the patient in person.
Prohibit border crossing to obtain legal drugs.
Make the doctor, not the drug company, solely responsible for damages caused by the prescription of a drug in a manner inconsistent with the drug's labelling. (As in Phen-Fen, celebrex, Viagara, RU-486, estrogen, and other abuses.)
No, these aren't very libertarian. But it's nonsensical to have requirements for prescriptions and testing of drugs, and then these absurd Clinton-era medical practices going on.
They should, but I doubt that banning advertising will pass muster. It used to be that physicians, lawyers, and pharmacies couldn't advertise (state laws). I believe those prohibitions were overturned on first amendment grounds. Of course, cigarettes and distilled liquor may be the analagous cases, in which case I would be wrong.
I quit using the terms "constitutional" and "unconstitutional" because they have no meaning, anymore, except to define what the unelected SC legislature allows and disallows, with only lip service paid to the Constitution for rationalization. But my thinking is that even banning advertisement of cigarettes and distilled liquor is antithetical to the Constitution, intellectual contortions like "public airways", etc. notwithstanding.