[alejohausner]

I’ve heard RFK say that it’s hard to ban TV ads for drugs. They are “speech” according to the 1st amendment, or something like that.

Too bad. News broadcasts are full of those ads, and hence TV journalists are loath to investigate the people that pay their salaries.

[vel0city]

There's loads of precedent pointing to commercial speech such as marketing as having some specific carve outs on the right to free speech. After all we have limits on tobacco marketing and food labeling requirements.

[HenryBemis]

The politicians are getting funded/paid (lobbying/donations) by the very same people/companies that pay the ad revenue to those media. Why on earth would politicians legislate against their actual bosses? (As a real life reminder - a dog that bites the hand that feed him is put down). Courts btw don't make up shit.. they 'judge' (verb) with the criteria of 'what does the law define'. So if politicians legislate wisely, courts will enforce any 'parliamentary' and/or executive order to ban the advertisements of medicine.

But they won't. Not until push-comes-to-shove, and the true bosses will reposition to 'the next thing' (smoking, sugary-foods, medicine) and then they will allow the politicians to finally block meds ads. In which case the 'next wave' will begin. Story as old as time...

[alistairSH]

They used to be paid of RJ Reynolds, etc as well.

The problem here is the drugs that are advertised as generally considered "good things". Anybody attempting to regulate the display of these ads would likely need to prove the ads are more harmful than any positive from the ads.

[HenryBemis]

The ads (and it's been debated) is (imho as well) a way to 'buy out those who can keep then in check'. Media/journalists are supposed to be doing that. But when your chief editor tells you "hey, 70% of our network's revenue comes from XYZ" even if you don't want to, you self-censor.

Anyway I have commented many times on the 'legalized bribing' called 'lobbying'. The dishonest ones always week because those with $$$ know very well who can they buy and who can they threaten.

[kongolongo]

Consumers can directly buy alcohol and tobacco, they cannot buy prescription drugs directly. If there is a problem isn't the primary culprit the prescriber?

[vel0city]

If consumers can't even buy these drugs, why do the direct marketing at all? Are you trying to suggest the consumer doesn't have much weight in the prescribing decisions of their doctors?

Clearly the pharmaceutical companies think there's a strong reason to directly market these drugs to consumers even if they can't directly purchase these drugs. The ads almost always say "ask your doctor about..." not "think about prescribing x to your patients..." If these ads didn't do much the industry wouldn't be spending billions of dollars on them.

[kongolongo]

>If these ads didn't do much the industry wouldn't be spending billions of dollars on them.

Thats speculative. Companies spend exorbitant amounts of money on things they lose money on all the time. What's not speculative is consumers cant buy the drugs themselves. They might ask doctors about it, but if the doctors are misprescribing that's on them or their training and not the consumer.

[vel0city]

You're acting as if people shopping around for doctors to get whatever pills they want isn't a thing. That consumers will ask their first GP about a drug, get told no, and then drop it to never ask again.

What's not speculative is consumers will find a way to buy the things they want to buy, and advertising has some amount of influence on purchasing decisions of most consumers.

Either way, can you draw this back to allowing or disallowing direct to consumer prescription drug advertising? Are you honestly suggesting the billions spent on drug advertising has no impact on drug sales?

[kongolongo]

Sure it might have an impact, but again the culpability of harm isn't on the consumer or advertiser. If people able to shop around for doctors to get any prescription then isn't that the problem, not the advertisement?

It doesn't matter if the adverts have an impact on sales, if it does then doctors are to blame, tv adverts cant prescribe people medication.

[temporallobe]

It’s baffling that TV ads for alcohol and cigarettes are illegal, but pharmaceuticals? That’s free speech!

[brookst]

TV ads for cigarettes are not legal in the US at least. And alcohol ads have a bunch of weird regulations like they can’t show people in the act of drinking (holding the booze is fine).

[johanneskanybal]

that's what illegal means.

[_heimdall]

I think you mean regulated. At best you could say ads showing people drinking alcohol are banned, but alcohol ads in general are regulated.

[tehwebguy]

Pretty sure the cigarette companies are stoked they can’t / don’t have to spend any money on TV ads

[kevin_thibedeau]

Transport yourself back to the 60s when America was great and Fred Flintstone was hawking Winston's.

[TylerE]

They were illegal up until quasi recently… mid 90s IIRC. I believe it was right around the time of Viagra - probably not a coincidence.

[aspenmayer]

Close, 1982 for print, 1983 for TV. You’re thinking of Rogaine, I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-to-consumer_advertising

> Merck published the first print DTC ad for a pneumonia vaccine targeting those aged 65 years and older, and Boots Pharmaceuticals aired the first DTC television commercial in 1983 for the prescription ibuprofen Rufen.

But that sentence was worded weirdly, so I checked the sources. This is one of the two for that part:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250114005757/https://adage.com...

> While 2006 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Claritin ad, it was actually 24 years ago that the FDA unwittingly opened the door to DTC. Speaking at the American Advertising Federation conference and addressing the Pharmaceutical Advertising Council, then-FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. summarized the state of drug advertising, saying it "may be on the brink of the exponential-growth phase of direct-to-consumer promotion of prescription products."

> Drug companies jumped on the phrase "exponential growth" and took it to mean the FDA, however tacitly, supported DTC.

> 'Opening a closed door'

> "It was viewed by the industry as FDA opening a closed door," said Kenneth R. Feather, a former associate FDA commissioner.

> A year later, in 1983, Boots Pharmaceuticals aired the first direct-to-consumer TV ad when it promoted its prescription ibuprofen medication, Rufen. The company also ran newspaper ads at the same time. That was in May; by September, the FDA asked the industry for a voluntary moratorium on drug advertisements. (Ibuprofen actually went over the counter a year later.)

> In 1984, Upjohn sponsored a major conference on DTC advertising in Washington, D.C., where it made no bones about expressing its opposition to the practice. But less than five years later, Upjohn was touting the merits of DTC after its hair-restoration medication, Rogaine, was approved by the FDA and needed to be marketed.

[bnjms]

I wonder if it would be possible to ban visuals on these ads. To allow only text.

[freejazz]

It's not and that's bullshit from RFK.

[more_corn]

The biggest war advertising ever won was manipulating us into classifying their manipulation as speech.

Convincing people to buy things they don’t want or need shouldn’t be protected speech. Convincing people to take medication they don’t need is the pinnacle of idiocratic capitalist absurdity.