Should prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers?

The US and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct to consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal.  In the US, these ads are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure that they are not false or misleading.

Many research organizations and pharmaceutical industry groups contend that the ads are educational, provide consumers with important information that may benefit their health, and help generate sales revenue necessary to offset high research and development costs.

Opponents counter that DTC drug ads are often just sales pitches which pressure doctors to provide unnecessary medications and cause patients to seek unhelpful and costly remedies. They say that the FDA does an inadequate job of making sure drug ads are not false or misleading. 

Here are my reasons why I believe that prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers:

• Direct to consumer prescription drug ads, like most advertisements, are intended to sell the product being advertised. Such ads use marketing tactics that manipulate, create false impressions, and otherwise mislead consumers instead of educating them about the drugs.

• Direct to consumer drug ads cause people to pick medicines based on the effectiveness of the advertisement rather than the effectiveness of the medication.

• Doctors may lose patients if they refuse to prescribe drugs that their patients have seen on television and now want. As a result, some physicians may sign prescription requests just to keep their patients happy and coming back, thereby becoming "rubber stamps" for patient requests. 

• Patients may hear a prescription drug's numerous side effects in an advertisement and forgo needed treatment out of fear without realizing that all medications have side effects. Patients need a balanced view of risks and benefits which cannot be presented in a short advertisement