[sweeneyrod]

In the context of a claimed difference of "several orders of magnitude" (i.e. >1000x), a difference of 1-2x rounds down to 1.

If you follow the citations for that Wikipedia claim (a very very basic step) you will see that they don't provide any evidence for an order of magnitudes difference.

I'm not usually in the habit of shilling for Big Pharma, but since you've taken such a condescending tone I'll make an exception and point out that according to that exact Wikipedia article you linked, literally the same paragraph on the topic mentions that the majority of marketing spending is on free samples. Unless you think that drug companies should raise their prices in order to fund more R&D (which would have the same effect as reducing free samples) this doesn't seem very objectionable.