Kill television drug ads

 On Monday, The New York Times brought the issue of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising back into the public square with an article, “Should Drug Companies Be Advertising to Consumers?”

According to an Open Secrets article, so-called “Big Pharma” spends “more than $10 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising, with the U.S. and New Zealand being the only countries that permit it.”  Normally, I could give two hoots what the rest of the world does, but this?  I’m thinking there’s wisdom in crowds with this one. We as a society have decided it’s in our self-interest and cultural interest to have our elected government look after our young by restricting television advertising aimed at them, so it seems to me we should look after the elderly and infirm too.

The Times reminds us that we’ve been subject to the infernal things only since 1997, so not quite thirty years, when the FDA “loosened restrictions and allowed prescription drug ads on television as long as they included a rapid-fire summary of major risks and provided a source for further information.”

The “summaries” or disclaimers would be funny if they weren’t so grim:  “side effects may include increased heart rate, bad breath, polka-dot skin, or DEATH.”  I’m being sarcastic, but when “death” is listed as a side effect, it stops being funny, doesn’t it?

Then with the introduction of Medicare Part D twenty years ago, the advertising to seniors took off like a rocket ship.  We’ve all seen the ads: happy smiling people with all manner of ailments, skipping and dancing now that they have their magic drug.  And lately the diseases they’re meant to cure or alleviate have been getting more obscure.  Have you noticed?  There are drugs for diseases I’ve actually Googled because it wasn’t at all clear from the advertising what in the world they were for, but evidently there are enough people out there with these things to make the expenditure worth it.  If nothing else, the ads make me grateful for my health!

The Times also points out how misleading the ads can be as they “encourage the use and overuse of expensive new medications, even when existing, cheaper drugs work as effectively. (Drug companies don’t bother advertising once patents expire and generic drugs become available.)”

Which is despicable.  And reason enough to ban these ads.  For being grossly misleading.  Especially when the target audience is the elderly, who have all they can do to deal with every scam imaginable.  It’s beyond the pale to try to sell vulnerable people on a fixed income a drug they can scarcely afford when a generic is out there for a fraction of the price.

And yes, their doctors can point them to the generic, but we’ve all heard doctors tell tales of patients insisting they must have the latest, newest thing, as they come to the office with visions of smiling happy people in their minds.  All the ads are doing is making a doctor’s already very hard job harder.  And what if the doctor doesn’t bother arguing for the generic?  Because it takes too much precious time or is too much of a hassle?  The ads are making the vulnerable more vulnerable, and to someone they should trust. And if there’s anything we’ve learned in the age of COVID, doctors aren’t all who we thought they were.  No, advertising is powerful propaganda, otherwise, Big Pharma wouldn’t spend $10 Billion a year doing it.  And it’s not doing doctors or patients any good.

Which is why Trump signed a memorandum last September to get the ball rolling on pulling these ads.  Basically what he did was make it more onerous for the drug companies to include the side-effects.  Perhaps you’ve noticed the side-effects listings on these ads have gotten longer, sometimes taking up at least half of a 30 second spot.  There’s a reason for that.  Trump’s memorandum.

“Meanwhile, Democratic and independent senators who rarely align with the Trump administration also have introduced legislation to ban or limit direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads,” says the Times.  Senator Angus King (I-ME) and Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) have each introduced bills to prohibit the ads either partially or completely.  So we’ve got a bipartisan issue here.  But, says the Times, that “might prove difficult… given the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling protecting corporate speech.”

But why should it?  Look, normally, I am a free speech absolutist, but there’s no prohibition on speech here.  It’s just the manner of time and place, and we have regulated the appropriate time and place of speech for ages.  We don’t allow nudity on television.  We don’t allow cursing (generally speaking) on television.  We don’t allow certain kinds of programming during the morning hours or the early evening hours.  And, says the Times:

Moreover, direct-to-consumer ads represent only part of the industry’s promotional efforts. Pharmaceutical firms actually spend more money advertising to doctors than to consumers.

So let them advertise to the people who can understand what they’re being sold, not vulnerable people being promised smiling and dancing.  Or at the absolute minimum, regulate Pharma ads the way we regulate cigarette ads: print only.

There’s a side benefit to getting these ads off television.  A big one.  It would cripple the garbage news/talk products currently being put out on both cable and broadcast t.v..  They would lose a major revenue stream — some estimates are as much as 25% of their advertising revenue comes from Big Pharma. It would no doubt result in two things:  mass firings and then, with luck, mass hirings of new and better (actual) reporters, who could bring in ratings, which would return them to profitability.  Imagine that:  news stations actually competing for ratings instead of competing for ideological purity.  What a world.  And talk about health — the body politic would be immeasurably healthier.

Now that’s what I call good medicine.

M. Walter blogs at www.mwalterwriter.com.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/02/kill_television_drug_ads.html