The Pros And Cons Of Direct-To-Consumer Advertisements

Every year in the United States, billions of dollars are spent towards advertisements for the pharmaceutical industry. As of 2016, 5.6 billion dollars were spent on Direct-to-Consumer advertisements. For decades, prescription drug makers only relied on health care providers to accurately inform patients of prescription drugs and how to safely use them. However, that has now changed and prescription drug producers started targeting consumers directly, which is only allowed in the United States and New Zealand. According to Ken Johnson, Senior Vice President of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, “Direct-to-consumer advertisements informs patients potentially suffering from disease and raises their awareness of treatment options”

Direct-to-Consumer advertisements should be banned from the United States because they weaken the relationship between patients and health care providers, misinform patients, promote drugs before long-term safety information is known, and increases health care costs.
Direct-to-Consumer advertisements are defined as “an effort made by a pharmaceutical company to promote its prescription products directly to patients” (Ventola para. 2). DTC advertisements are responsible for 12% of the increase in prescription drug sales. Pharmaceutical manufacturers use several types of promotions for a specified medication; such as detailing, sampling, DTC advertisements, and medical journal advertising. Detailing which accounts for 29% of the spending in the pharmaceutical

Medicine and marketing has driven our society to a whole another level in which one thinks that a certain medication is the answer to all of one’s problem, when lifestyle changes or different alternatives could be the solution to their problems. DTC ads have broken the link between the patient and healthcare provider by advertising medications out to the public when only doctors should be the only one to have and release prescription medications that they fit based to the patient’s need. As a country, one should work on reestablishing the patient to health care provider relationship, as it once was. Without a doubt, drugs are both harmful and beneficial by relieving one from pain when sick yet prompting society to rely too much on medicine by seeking a pill for every illness. Introducing new medication to the public without knowing the safety of it puts many lives at stake and the public is yet to know that the FDA does not know if all the medication is safe for them to take. According to Kurt Stange, professor of family medicine and community health, “[t]here is no evidence that consumer ads improve treatment quality or result in earlier provision of needed care” (para. 3). So, if DTC ads are not making treatment quality better, how are DTC ads helping in our