Imagine you are sick with a serious medical condition. How would you feel if someone constantly told you to buy their product because it would cure you, but this “cure” is actually worse than other treatments, and the price tag is enormous?
Brandon Novick
This is the reality of prescription drug advertising. Whether on television or online, drug companies spend billions to tell Americans to buy their products. In 2024, giant pharmaceutical companies spent more than $6 billion on television alone, and nearly $50 billion in the decade prior, according to IQVIA, a healthcare technology company.
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Yet these ads don’t include relevant medical facts to prove that a drug is effective, and they fail to provide evidence of risks. Even the long list of side effects that narrators are legally required to read at the end of TV commercials often fails to include all health risks from each drug. Instead, companies play hopeful music and show healthy, active people playing sports or otherwise enjoying their lives.
For more than four decades, I have navigated life while managing a chronic disease. This experience comes with countless appointments, trying new medicines and learning to be my own advocate in a health system that can feel overwhelming for patients.
This is because drug advertisements are tools of emotional manipulation. Companies want consumers to think their products will work.
Studies suggest that drug companies spend more money on treatments that are less beneficial but more profitable. This coincides with Americans spending three times as much on prescription drugs in 2022 compared to other wealthy nations, according to RAND.
These ads aren’t just wasteful. They can be dangerous. In 2002, Merck aired a television ad for its anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, featuring Olympic gold medalist Dorothy Hamill figure skating. She explained how Vioxx helped her overcome osteoarthritis pain.
What the ad didn’t say was that the company knew Vioxx was no more effective than another treatment, naproxen. Vioxx also increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. While Merck raked in billions, the FDA’s David Graham estimated the drug contributed to thousands of deaths.
Merck is by no means the only drug company that deceived Americans about its products. From 1991 to 2021, drug companies paid federal and state governments more than $22 billion for unlawful promotion of their drugs, according to Public Citizen. Yet these fines pale in comparison to the $1.9 trillion the 35 largest drug companies made between 2000 and 2018.
The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising. Congress can try to enact a ban, as U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Angus King, I-Maine, have proposed.
Yet courts will likely prevent the U.S. from banning drug ads because doing so could violate the free speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment. Under current legal standards, supporters of a ban must show that drug ads are misleading, harmful to public health and cannot be sufficiently improved by less restrictive government policy.
The courts — especially the corporate-friendly Supreme Court — would likely rule that a direct ban is not the least restrictive means of stopping harmful drug advertising.
The court may be right, because Congress can de facto ban deceitful drug advertising on television and online without passing a direct ban. Congress can and should require companies to clearly mention — visibly and audibly — all risks from a drug, rather than today’s weak standards that came from 1997 federal regulations. Violations of this requirement must result in significant fines that threaten the product's profitability.
Congress can also eliminate the liability shield protecting drug companies. Americans cannot sue drug companies for misleading them or causing harm, as long as the companies warn doctors and other drug prescribers of the risks.
By forcing companies to spend much of their advertising time mentioning all risks and opening them up to lawsuits, Congress can indirectly ban deceitful, harmful ads by making them unprofitable. Making drug companies liable for failing to warn consumers of all risks also better incentivizes companies to market drugs that are safer and more effective.
Novick is the domestic policy coordinator at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
