US lawmakers seek ban on DTC advertising
US Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King have introduced a bill that seeks to ban direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising by the pharmaceutical industry, including on social media.
The two independent lawmakers said the End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act (PDF) would bring the US into line with "virtually every other country on earth," recognising that the US and New Zealand are currently the only two countries in the world that allow drug companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to patients.
They also pointed out that their plan also ties in with repeated calls by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to end the practice, which saw an estimated $5 billion spent by the industry last year on television advertising alone.
"One of the things I'm going to advise Donald Trump to do in order to correct the chronic disease epidemic is to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV," Kennedy said at a campaign event for Trump before last year's election. It is estimated that prescription drug commercials now account for almost a third of commercial time on the evening news programmes of the major US TV networks.
Sanders and King's bill – which is being supported by Democrat Senators Chris Murphy, Peter Welch, Jeff Merkley, and Dick Durbin – would introduce an immediate ban on prescription medicine advertising on any form of media, including television, radio, print, digital platforms, and social media.
"The American people are sick and tired of greedy pharmaceutical companies spending billions of dollars on absurd TV commercials pushing their outrageously expensive prescription drugs," said Sanders.
"The American people don't want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television. They want us to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and ban these bogus ads," he added.
The idea is not new and radical, given that the American Medical Association came out in favour of a ban a decade ago, and the text of the new bill claims that studies have shown that "more than half of prescription drug ads are misleading or false, causing many Americans to underestimate the associated risks."
The proposed legislation also implies that a ban could help reduce healthcare costs in the US by preventing the industry from pushing high-priced medications over cheaper options, although that is open to debate. Some argue that advertising can also promote the legitimate use of effective therapies that can help reduce healthcare spending in the long term.
The US pharma industry has long argued (PDF) that it spends much more on R&D than marketing and promotion, its spending on research is strengthened and not diminished by DTC ads, and the FDA effectively regulates its activities to ensure this type of advertising educates patients and healthcare professionals and benefits the health system overall.
