Pushing Drugs

 

If selling “illegal substances” is a crime, what about legal drug pushers? Pharmaceutical manufacturers, that is. In 1997, the drug companies turned to aggressively hawking their products directly to consumers after generations of leaving the need for drugs and their selection to medical professionals.

Television commercials and print ads urge the public to tell their doctors they want the prescription medicines that are being pushed.

 

Buy Nexium, “The Purple Pill,” they say. It will fix your heartburn.

Only now it’s called acid reflux disease, with all the potential dangers implied by the new name for that ominous affliction.

Or, a pill that can help with bipolar disorder, deadly artery plaque, or perhaps some new syndrome.

Watching television at night, we easily see ten or twenty commercials hustling drugs. All this aggressive marketing of drugs is perfectly legal. You can go to jail for smoking “weed,” but it’s OK to drug your children so they will behave themselves and, hopefully, learn, or take drugs yourself to deal with problems such as erectile disfunction, an enlarged prostate, arterial plaque, arthritis, menopause, and on and on, ad infinitum.

 

But, watch out they tell us, droning on endlessly about the potential side effects of their products.

Everything from gas to headaches to fainting to possible liver and kidney damage, and on and on they warn — a veritable litany of the risks of taking their medications.

And, what has all this produced? An out-of-control drug culture, with mixed messages coming at us from every direction, confusing and misdirecting our attention, that’s what.

Don’t “do drugs” unless, of course, they happen to be the drugs of choice that the drug companies are hustling.

The reason, to be sure, is obvious: It’s about increasing sales. And, it works.

From 1996 to 2005, the amount of money spent on advertising by drug companies increased from $11.4 billion to $29.9 billion. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Aug. 16, 2007). A study by Elizabeth Ann Almasi (at Stanford University), “The Relationship between Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising and Prescription Rates,” included the following information:

“…prescriptions for the fifty most heavily advertised drugs grew at a rate six times greater (24.6 percent) than other drugs (4.3 percent) between 1999 and 2000.”

“Besides prescriptions, [direct-to-consumer advertising] has also increased the demand for other forms of treatment. Fourteen percent of patients disclosed health concerns as a result of advertising.”

“A study by Murray (2004) found that 24 percent of all people scheduled a visit with their physician specifically to talk about a prescription drug advertisement.”

“Unfortunately, physicians also granted 12 percent of ad generated prescription drug requests in which they did not believe the therapy would be helpful.”

 

“Spending on [direct-to-consumer advertising] is highly concentrated on products which generally treat chronic conditions and have a low incidence of side effects (Rosenthal et al, 2002).”

So, what to do about all this? Should the government ban all direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs? Unfortunately, that’s not possible —because advertising is also considered free speech, and we can’t deprive the drug companies of their right to speak, that is, to advertise.

If direct-to-consumer advertising can’t be banned, what can be done? Could the FDA counter the drug companies’ hype by educating the public to the fact that most of what is beamed our way is not intended to educate, so much as to scare potential customers?

I don’t know, but my sense is, don’t count on it.

Nothing sells like fear, and marketing drugs directly to consumers is based on fear.

But, that’s just my opinion.

 

© 2008 Harris R. Sherline

All Rights Reserved

 

Read more of Harris Sherline’s commentaries on his blog at http://www.opinionfest.com.