It seems like everytime I watch television these days, I see multiple ads for various prescription drugs. The ads usually go like this: an old couple takes a romantic walk on the beach during sunset while a soft voiceover describes how liberated I can be by taking a certain presciption drug. At the end of the ad comes the warnings about blood in my stool or heart attacks.
This was not always the case. Growing up, there were never prescription drug ads on television. Drug companies began advertising directly to the public in the early 1980s. Drug companies had previously targeted customers only through health care providers (i.e., doctors). Direct ads for prescription drugs, however, raised numerous medical and ethical concerns within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As a result, the FDA issued a moratorium in 1983, temporarily suspending all direct ads, to prevent pharmaceutical companies from moving further “into this uncharted area.”
Pharmaceutical companies in the US now spend $12.3 billion per year on ads, a huge boost to the bottom line of NBC, CBS and every other channel on your television. In my opinion, this is a clear conflict of interest for television producers that crave advertising dollars. In order to feed the bottom line, television networks must continue to attract more and more ads for prescription drugs, which, in turn, causes the American public to crave these drugs. Keep in mind that the average American watches an astoundingly slavish 6.47 hours of television per day.
The FDA, the government agency supposedly charged with protecting consumers from unsafe drugs, has been noticeably silent on this issue over the past few years. A Consumer Reports study found that “the number of regulatory letters it [the FDA] sent manufacturers about false or misleading drug ads has dropped precipitously, from more than 100 per year in the late 1990s to just 24 as of November 2002, according to the FDA’s latest listing of its letters.”
The Journal of American Medicine conducted a study on the effects of prescription drug ads on consumers (i.e., people). This was a very unusual study. It found that drug ads have a powerful influence on doctors, which can lead to patients getting prescription drugs whether they need them or not. “Direct-to-consumer advertising may have competing effects on quality, potentially both averting underuse and promoting overuse.”
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