In 1996 it was not possible for a drug manufacturer to push their product to people who could not buy it. It takes prescriptions to buy such drugs. Advertising to the end user that cannot legally purchase the product means only one thing: that end user will pressure the doctor to give them what they have been sold on from television, whether they have it or not. And people wonder why society is so drug damaged.
Then, in 1997 it became legal. Now, governments and people are desperately trying to recover from the result.
It is simply the height of hypocrisy to encourage drug use with one law while suing the manufacturers to recover from the results.
The responsibility for opioid deaths and drug abuse nationwide does NOT fall to the manufacturer making products that help people: IT IS WITH THE POLITICIANS WHO PERMITTED IT TO HAPPEN by encouraging drug use through massive ad campaigns telling people of ailments they never knew they had!
It wasn’t legal for attorneys to advertise. I wonder why. Oh yes. They create their own income. Lawyers do not take cases they know they cannot win. Most of that is incompetence, but the rest is simply they don’t need to. Attorneys are no longer hungry. Attorney advertising has created a litigious society that sues for every single objection to life.
The same thing happened to health.
Health is a matter of two things. Availability and affordability. All health care plans only address the affordability and have, since the disaster of Obama Care, been nothing but how to pay for it while what it is, is dieing on the vine. Doctors were leaving the business. Hospitals were shutting down. All because of how the payments were decided. Never mind the care part of the topic.
While government was taking over the distribution of health care by controlling its affordability it was ignoring the availability. Just like government does.
But while government was tinkering with socialism, people were actually paying attention to commercials. The overwhelming quantity of medical advertisements has turned the evening television family time into ‘what new ailment do we have today’. People are easily swayed. Advertisers know that. All it takes is repetition of a simple premise. That premise is that drugs are now mainstream items. Instead of a tool used by physicians, drugs are now a daily event in most people’s lives. Doctors should know every ailment you might acquire through life, but you should not! Every bit a person knows about a topic sends that person closer to grasping the topic. With drugs, the result has been humanly catastrophic.
If politicians really cared about the people they would:
1: Repeal whatever law it is that permits prescription drugs to be advertised to consumers. Make it so advertisers cannot target people who cannot legally purchase the product without a prescription.
2: Repeal whatever law it is that permits lawyers to advertise their services on television and radio. Allow internet and print media so as not to curtail commerce.
The end result of these is simple:
1: Drugs will stop being the #1 topic of the media. People will slowly stop concentrating on symptoms and declaring their own diagnoses and start seeing a doctor for answers NOT FULFILLMENT OF AN ORDER. Doctors are professionals who have been relegated to nothing but script writers to fulfill the call to action of whatever drug company the user has decided to believe.
and
2: The amount of law suits will dramatically decline and lawyers will have to start taking cases they otherwise would have thrown away. Lawyers will have to work for a living again. People might actually start receiving justice. Lawyers who are not hungry and snake oil salesmen.
A number of years ago, for the book Modern-Mysticism, I created the chapter entitled “The Real Drug Abuse Epidemic”. It bears repeating and should be heeded now before the human condition becomes comatose.
With the recent revelation from a hero: Dr. David Franklin as reported by NBC’s Dateline: drugs, and the abuse of them, by the makers of them, gives rise to the seriousness of ‘direct to consumer’, whether it is a physician consumer who prescribes, or a patient consumer who demands what they have last become aware of.
Posted in Dr. Joseph Mercola’s web site http://www.mercola.com NYT author Melody Petersen spoke in 2001 about the problems. [1]
Since then, the FDA has not raised one finger to curb the abuse of drugs. It is becoming increasingly clear that the war on drugs is targeting the wrong culprits.
“The 50 most-advertised prescription medicines contributed significantly last year to the increase in the nation’s spending on drugs,” wrote Peterson. [1]
[That was 18 years ago.]
The report was prepared by the National Institute for Health Care Management, a nonprofit research foundation that was founded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance plans. Increases in the sales of the 50 drugs that were most heavily advertised to consumers accounted for almost half the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, according to the study. The remainder of the spending increase came from 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little. The study attributed the spending increase to a boost in the number of prescriptions for the 50 drugs, and not from a rise in their price.
“The Food and Drug Administration is now reviewing whether it should change rules it enacted in 1997 that made it easier for pharmaceutical companies to advertise their products on television.”
They are? Four years later [now 22 years later], there are more drug commercials on US Television than ever before: back to back remedies for just about every conceivable ailment, some of which most people have never heard of.
Doctors are being approached with solutions instead of requests for diagnoses. [A people wonder why!]
“Merck spent $160.8 million to promote Vioxx to consumers – more than PepsiCo spent to advertise Pepsi or Budweiser spent to advertise its beer, the study said. With the help of the advertising, Vioxx sales quadrupled to $1.5 billion (in 2001) last year from about $330 million in 1999.” [1]
According to NBC correspondent John Hockenberry of Dateline: in 1996 Dr. David Franklin spent four months pretending to be an expert in many fields to gain trust of doctors and sell them the drugs, through training and company instruction.
“It was my responsibility to leverage the trust that physicians had with pharmaceutical companies to corrupt the relationship between the physician and the patient,” Dr. Franklin is quoted as saying in the report.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Sheehan, “one of the country’s leading prosecutors of health care fraud” provides a bothersome quote to Dateline:
“Every prescription drug is an inherently dangerous product with the potential to kill people as well as cure them. That’s why we have very strict regulation, that’s why we have rules about what marketing and promotion they can do. That’s why we have rules about what they can produce and how they produce it.”
Where else in the world would a dangerous drug, not available to the consumer, without a physician’s prescription, be advertised directly to the consumer? According to Peterson, “Only the United States and New Zealand permit advertising of prescription medicines to consumers.” [1]
“Celebrex, another arthritis drug, which is locked in a marketing battle with Vioxx, was the seventh most widely promoted drug to consumers and was the fourth-largest contributor to drug sales growth last year. Other heavily advertised drugs contributing to the rise in drug sales are the cholesterol-lowering drugs, Lipitor, Zocor and Pravachol; as well as Paxil and Prozac, for depression; Claritin, Allegra and Zyrtec for allergies; and Prilosec for ulcers.”
What does public advertising of drugs by drug companies have to do with anything?
It is the EXACT SAME CRIME AS A PUSHER ON THE STREET:
1: They are advertising a drug that is ILLEGAL to come by through direct means. The consumer they advertise to cannot buy the product legally without a prescription.
2: They are pushing an illegal drug publicly, where children not only hear the advertisements but are suckered into the belief that such advertising is normal and good.
3: They both build a counter-culture. The street gang controls the market through its pushers, normally headed by organized crime. The pharmaceutical company controls the market through its doctors. Why are the drug companies not being prosecuted for organized crime?
Hockenberry says, “With his Ph.D. and the title of doctor, Franklin says he became part of a broad mission to deceive, even entice doctors to prescribe drugs to patients whether it was scientifically justified or not.” A common pusher!
“It was a matter of leveraging, corrupting, if you would, perverting the science, to greatly increase sales and profitability:” Franklin.
Franklin worked for Parke-Davis, pushing Neurontin. Since 2000 Parke-Davis, a division of Warner-Lambert has belonged to Pfzier, “the biggest drug company in the world”.
It has been legal to advertise drugs, which would be illegal if the advertiser was not the manufacturer and only the pusher, since a 1997 change in FDA regulations. Not that challenges have not been attempted, only to face objection on constitutional grounds.
“Pfizer, Inc. has argued that open access to information is ‘at the core of the First Amendment.’ Pfizer lawyer Arnold Friede, speaking at a Friday forum hosted by the Federalist Society, lamented the ‘enormous loss of agency credibility in the courts’ and warned that the integrity of the FDA drug approval process is at stake.”
There is no provision in the Constitution that allows a product, illegal to be sold without prescription, to be marketed to consumers who cannot purchase the product without prescription.
On June 23, 2003 Senator John Edwards introduced a “TRUTH-IN-DRUG-ADVERTISING BILL”, completely missing the point.
It is not necessary to force drug companies to be truthful in ads. It is necessary to take drug companies OUT of the direct to consumer business UNLESS THE FDA HAS APPROVED OVER THE COUNTER SALES.
Yes, over the counter drugs are able, and well should, be advertised, as they are able to be purchased by the consumer. But to allow drug companies to advertise drugs consumers are NOT ABLE TO PURCHASE without a physician’s prescription GETS IN THE WAY OF THE DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP.
According to Edwards misdirected bill: “Drug companies spent $3 billion last year in direct-to-consumer advertising, more than three times what they spent in 1996. A recent Food and Drug Administration survey found that 70 percent of general practitioners said drug ads confuse patients about the relative risks and benefits of medicines. The FDA has cited many companies for deliberately misleading consumers. Last year, Pfizer falsely claimed that its Lipitor was safer than other cholesterol-lowering drugs. Earlier, the FDA told Procter & Gamble to stop ads that obscured information about an osteoporosis drug’s risks with ‘fast-paced, rapidly changing, distracting images.'”
“Senator Edwards’ amendment would require drug companies to provide information about the risks, side effects and proven effectiveness of drugs as prominently as they hype purported benefits.”
And do absolutely nothing about stopping the real drug epidemic.
“Cosponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, the legislation also would encourage innovative drug research by discouraging copycat drugs, new brand-name drugs that are nearly identical to existing ones. Copycat drugs make up 85 percent of new drugs approved by the FDA. While they allow additional drug companies to break into lucrative markets, they do little to reward actual innovation or advance options for patients. Senator Edwards’ amendment would require a drug company to prove that its drug is better than drugs currently on the market. The FDA would approve new drugs only if they are more effective, safer, or easier to use than existing therapies.”
So called ‘Copycat’ drugs in any other industry would be called competition. Edwards apparently does not understand a free market system.
With ‘over the counter’ drugs as one product, and prescription drugs as another product, drug companies have managed to fool the FDA into ignoring the difference.
And here we are, four years (22 now) after the review was started: more drug commercials than ever before, higher consumer spending on the top 50 advertised drugs, drugs being sold through deception to increase profits and the Food and Drug Administration playing the game.
Families USA has provided a chart, http://www.actupny.org/reports/drugcosts.html#chart_one, showing the expenditures for advertising and research by drug companies.
In 2000, Merck and Co., Inc. spent 15% of net sales on advertising and 6% on research.
Pfizer Inc. spent 39% of net sales on advertising and 15% on research.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company spent 30% of net sales on advertising and 11% on research.
The rest are worse.
Drugs are developed to treat symptoms of most causes, as most causes are not understood, while the sale of those drugs is illegal without prescription.
All of that spending on advertising is for one purpose: to cause the consumer to insist the physician NOT DO THEIR JOB and instead, follow the advice of drug company slick and colorful advertisement.
A great deal of responsibility rests on the physicians who should stop prescribing any drug advertised in the marketplace directly to consumers. It is the only way they will protect their position as healer and retain any semblance of doctor-patient trust. Competition does exist for most advertised drugs in the ‘copycat’ alternatives Edwards seeks to destroy.
A great deal of responsibility rests with the drug companies who should direct their revenue to research and put money where it will do good, to result in new drugs and therapies instead of where it will only do good for the short term P&L statement.
But the majority of the responsibility for the fiasco of the real drug epidemic rests with the Food and Drug Administration [and the politicians who created the mess].
Human beings, cast into long-term memory captivation by television programs, are readily looking for solutions to ailments and pains. Seeing a new ad claiming to eliminate their problem or even worse, identify a problem they did not know they had; only serves to increase dependency on drugs as a solution to problems the drug makers do not understand.
Zoloft’s (Pfizer) slogan says it all:
“When you know more about what’s wrong, you can help make it right!” ® Pfizer
You’re feeling ‘down’ and depressed so, “Side effects may include the following: upset stomach, trouble sleeping, diarrhea, dry mouth, sexual side effects, feeling sleepy or tired, tremor, indigestion, sweating, feeling agitated, and having less appetite.”
Pfizer does not know what causes depression. Pfizer does not know how depression works in the brain. Pfizer does not know what Zoloft really does to a brain.
But it is just fine to advertise it like they do.
No it isn’t.
That was many years ago. Now, the drug abuse epidemic in this country has passed the stage of emergency and turned right into the primal scream of frustration.
STOP suing manufacturers so people in pain will lose their medication.
PUNISH the politicians who made this mess.
But most of all STOP LEGAL ADVERTISING OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS IMMEDIATELY!
Or join the long list of hypocritical and cowardly failed leaders crying over caskets you could have kept empty.