Once in a blue moon something would come along that had been prescribed personally for me by my doc, and I'd snag a few bottles of it.
About a third of all my wife's freebie samples went to a free clinic she used to do volunteer work for.
There was a hazardous medical waste disposal site at the hospital, but the freebie samples required special packaging. Basically it was a big pain in the neck dealing with the stuff no matter what you did with it.
The other little gifts: notepads, pens, paperweights, calanders, cheapo clocks, etc... those, we usually just handed out to friends, relatives and neighbors.
The pharmaceutical companies are just wasting their time doing this kind of advertising, imo. But heck, if it makes them feel better, let them do it.
The only time we I actually enjoyed any of it was when they invited spouses to one of those big lavish dinners. In those cases, they actually did put out some big bucks -- especially on the wine, which they sometimes allowed the doctors to order...hehe...
But as I said, even in those cases, you'd have to sit there listening to series of salesmen push a particular drug for a couple of hours. I enjoyed them because it was just in one ear and out the other. But you could look around the room and see all the doctors sitting there rolling their eyes, lol!
One time one of the doctors showed up drunk with a hooker on his arm, and got drunker as the night progressed, eventually almost getting into a fistfight with one of the sales reps. That was pretty funny.
All ancient history now for my better half and I... Gifts are no longer permitted where she works.
I worked for a brokerage house after getting laid off during the Clinton Recession. They were a lot more careful about spreading their samples around. Of course that was a completely different industry. Grocery wholesalers and manufacturers do not have the same profit line to soake p that kind of sales incompetence.
Curious however. When was this "Ancient history"? In the last 5 years?