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Opposition Increases to Prescription Drug Ads

Posting Date: 07/04/2005

Are you fed up with prescription drug ads? If so, you are not alone.

For the last several years Americans have been bombarded with commercials that promote drugs for satisfying sex or overactive bladder. Readers have complained about trying to explain erectile dysfunction or PMS to pre-teens.

Such ads are almost uniquely American. Except for New Zealand, no other country in the industrialized world permits prescription drugs to be advertised straight to consumers. You can?t run to the store to buy any of these products. They all require a doctor?s prescription.

Some physicians are also getting sick and tired of the hard sell. At a recent meeting of the American Medical Association, several resolutions were introduced urging restrictions or even an outright ban on direct-to-consumer commercials.

Doctors supporting the resolutions tried to convince their colleagues to take action. When the pharmaceutical industry got wind of this effort, it responded quickly. Its Washington lobbyists usually put pressure on Congress, but that week they went to the AMA national meeting in Chicago instead.

Whether the professional persuaders were successful, or whether most doctors are lukewarm on the issue, we don?t know. The AMA concluded the discussion by resolving to study the question for another year.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) must have been pleased. This drug industry trade organization maintains that such ads improve patients? awareness of disease and encourage them to visit their doctors.

One ad proponent, Richard E. Ralston, Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, says, ?Keeping patients barefoot and ignorant is not the solution. Despite the tireless efforts of pharmaceutical salesmen, physicians in general practice or internal medicine can?t possibly keep up with all the features of the many new drugs and how they might apply to every patient?When you see a commercial for a new drug it offers the potential to make somebody feel better. Let?s leave those commercials and the drug companies alone.?