Ban Prescription Drug Advertising

Direct to Consumer (DTC) advertising for pharmaceutical drugs is beginning to dominate our broadcast airwaves and many of our print magazines. It's curious that in all the hype about health care reform, little if anything has been said about this practice adding costs to our health care packages.

Pharmaceutical companies claim they need the revenues generated so they can continue their research and development of new drugs they think we so desparately need. When you "follow the money" however, we find that in 2004, the drug companies spent approximately 25 percent of their sales income on promotion and only 13.4 percent on research and development. If you don't have new items coming down the pipe line, spend more on promoting what already exists.

Part of the problem with this is the commercials appeal to our emotions so that we want to demand these drugs even if our doctors might suggest otherwise. It also gives us the deliberate thought that all of our ailments and problems can be solved by taking the right pill. This is a form of addiction, telling us that we should not tolerate any type of pain and should take a pill immediately to resolve the situation.

Many of our conditions are a result of poor lifestyle choices, which the commercials for pharmaceuticals as well as over the counter (otc) medications try to lead us to believe that we can do whatever we want to, then fix it with a pill.

If you pay close attention to the commercials they are required to tell you about possible side effects, which always sound worse than the original problem. What they don't tell you however, is that many of the drugs they are promoting, are not going to be effective in solving the problem they say they cure in the first place. But as long as we keep buying them, they don't care if they are ineffective or if we stop taking them, because someone else will take our place and profits will continue to skyrocket.

We need to stop the drug companies from playing on our emotions when it comes to this type of drug abuse. The only effective way to stop it would be to pass a ban on this type of advertising, just like we passed on alcohol and tobacco advertising. If the drug companies stop spending so much on advertising, maybe the cost of the medication to us would drop, thus reducing some of our health care costs.

Dr. Andrew Weil just published a new book that address many of these issues, called Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future. If we find more information about this issue, maybe we can get some resolution on the problem. What do you think?