Regardless of what Americans think about Donald Trump, there are few who will complain about an order the president signed Tuesday. Its goal: a crackdown on pharmaceutical ads, which comprise nearly a quarter of evening ads on popular TV networks.
The order was hailed as historic by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said prescription drug ads have had a “disastrous” impact on human health.
“Americans are led to believe that there’s a pill for every illness, and that you don’t have to exercise, you don’t have to pay attention to your diet... whatever goes wrong with you, you can fix with a drug,” Kennedy told Bret Baier of Fox News.
Most Americans, however, will just be relieved not to have to sit through embarrassing ads on TV with their children or parents in the room if the order has the desired effect.
“People hate drug ads on TV,” Stat reported two years ago, looking at complaints consumers have lodged with the FCC. The complaints fell into four categories: the number of ads, the repetition, the inappropriateness for children and the oft-mocked list of side effects.
Ironically, it was a loosening of restrictions on side-effect disclosure that led us to the place where almost everyone knows the Ozempic song — a rendition of a 1974 song called “Magic.” This change occurred during the Clinton administration, in 1997.
In 1993, pharmaceutical companies spent $166 million on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. By 2005, that had increased to $4.2 billion, and it has reportedly doubled since then.
“Prescription drug brands accounted for 24.4% of ad minutes across evening news programs on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC this year through May,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from iSpot.
The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct-to-consumer ads for prescription medicine. Critics say such advertising interferes with the doctor-patient relationship, and can lead to overprescribing and self-diagnosis. The American Medical Association has repeatedly called for an end to the ads.
Their defenders, however, say the ads are “commercial speech” protected by the First Amendment, and that they advance public health by educating consumers about disease and treatment options and encourage people to see doctors.
And the loss of these advertising dollars would be a blow to media outlets already struggling to survive.
The order that Trump signed Tuesday authorizes Kennedy Jr. and the FDA to take “appropriate action” to enforce existing laws governing pharmaceutical ads and to “ensure transparency and accuracy ... including by increasing the amount of information regarding any risks associated with the use of any such prescription drug required to be provided in prescription drug advertisements.”
In other words, the ads could become even more cumbersome than they already are.
In reporting on the loosening of restrictions in 1997, The Wall Street Journal described “mind-numbing commercials,” such as one for the birth-control injection Depo-Provera: “Fully half of the two-minute spot ... was dedicated to screen after screen of tiny print, detailing such possible side effects” such as convulsions, jaundice and irregular menstruation.
But Kennedy believes that returning to stricter rules of disclosure will result in fewer ads, and that’s cause for alarm for media companies that depend on pharmaceutical company dollars.
“If drugmakers were forced to include a comprehensive and complete list of side effects, one media executive says, the result would be ads that are unworkably long for TV, which is built around 15, 30, and 60 second commercials,” Alex Weprin wrote for The Hollywood Reporter.
Kennedy, speaking after the signing of the order, said that some ads could last as long as four minutes if every potential side effect of a drug is listed.
The move may please legislators on both sides of the political aisle.
In June, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, working with Maine Sen. Angus King, proposed legislation that would ban prescription drug advertising on social media, TV, radio, print and digital platforms.
A month earlier, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, sponsored a bill that would have ended companies’ ability to write off direct-to-consumer drug advertising on their taxes.