Take Prescription Drug Ads off the Air Already

Only allowed in US and New Zealand

My father was a doctor and when I was a kid in the 1950s I recall asking him why he didn’t advertise. Medicine was his business, wasn’t it? Normally responsive to my questions, he was taken aback, wondering how I would even countenance such a thing. The honorable medical profession was above that. They weren’t a bag of potato chips or the latest Chevrolet.

I think he said something about Hippocrates, but maybe I’m making that part up. He did at other times.

I don’t remember him advertising or anyone he was associated with doing so. And I don’t remember pharmaceutical ads for prescription drugs on radio and TV either, for the latest antibiotic or anything else. The exception was for over-the-counter drugs, usually analgesics in some form or cough medicine. “Alka Seltzer, Speedy Alka-Seltzer” is forever implanted in my brain.

That was then, as they say, and this is now. We have all sorts of advertisements for medical installations big and small competing for our attention (and money), but even worse we have virtually non-stop advertising for prescription drugs on television. Indeed they seem to dominate the medium appearing on cable and network alike to the degree that sometimes you wonder if there is anything else. I imagine my father would be appalled.

Seemingly most common of these ads are the semaglutide weight loss drugs (Ozempic, etc.) that feature chubby women dancing about gleefully among various food displays, supermarket and open air, in praise of the wonders of the drug until the narrator begins the required recitation of side effects at a speed approaching Mach 20. At that moment the visual explodes into a latter-day Busby Berkeley routine, triumphant music swelling, to distract viewers from the narration lest they might catch that the drug could inspire suicidal ideation or give you any of several dreaded, possibly terminal, diseases.

The audience for these extravaganzas are reassured that all will be well for life, they will find love, they can go to the beach this summer, as long as they take their injection.

This preys especially on young women promising them papa Big Pharma will remedy whatever bad habits they have developed since childhood throughout their lives. Thereby those same habits are as likely to be encouraged as much as mitigated. We see the results in our world-leading obesity rates. Of course that’s not the only cause, but it’s one of them.

Spookier and now apparently growing are adverts for drugs to cure mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar (Fanapt, etc.). They began as live action ads with twenty-somethings strolling in the park while a voice over explains their seemingly paranoid thoughts are not really abnormal but are what everybody has, and can be made to fade into the ether by the use of the drug. You will be able to walk off, happily ever after, with the significant other of your choice.

These ads have proliferated and are now in cartoon form, perhaps to reach a younger audience. Meanwhile, the drugs themselves are controversial and do not always work. Some think they should not be taken at all or are less effective than a walk around the block. These are questions that should not, to say the least, be resolved in fifty seconds of manipulative television. It’s hard enough in a medical office where the doctor is forever tinkering with dosages to find a solution to often intractable emotional problems.

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries where prescription drug ads are legal on television. Some would argue that this shows us standing up for freedom of speech, but I would submit there is something here eerily equivalent to that famous limitation on speech — “yelling fire in a crowded theatre.”

That theatre is of course our country where drug use of all sorts, legal and otherwise, proliferates. On multiple occasions, some have advocated making all drugs legal, but that supposed idealism ends up being a danger to public safety and is almost always rescinded.

Fentanyl is only the latest in a long parade of such nightmares going back to opium and beyond. While the Trump administration is justified in cracking down on the Mexican Cartels and China for importing Fentanyl, why do so many of our citizens feel a need for this hugely-destructive drug in the first place?

Some of the explanation for this cycle of addiction must be that our entire society is constantly bombarded from early childhood—on television most of all but virtually everywhere else—with propaganda that drugs in various forms are the salvation from life’s pain. Not only is this not true, it is most often absolutely the reverse, no matter who is selling the drugs. We saw this writ large during COVID-19. Fentanyl is the dark, or darker, side of all this, as are the use of various drugs for the young to alter their “gender” even before puberty.

We live in a society where pharmaceutical corporations hypnotize us into thinking there is a pill for everything. They are doing the same to the medical community on a daily basis for mutual gain. Too many doctors have become prisoners of both the pharmaceutical companies and themselves, leaning expectantly on lobbyists for the latest cure-alls. It’s a toxic syndrome that must be stopped.

In the midst of the monumental changes initiated by the Trump administration, arguably the most important, the most salubrious to all of us in the end, stems from the supposedly controversial appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He has long been an opponent of this form of advertising, not to mention numerous other neglected aspects of public health, including but not limited to what we eat. That last is more than arguably the most significant of all.

Mr. Kennedy has been attacked in a variety of ways, most prominently because he is accused of not having the proper credentials for the job. Some of us, given what has occurred in recent years, might consider that a feature, not a bug, but nevertheless he is flanked by Jay Bhatturchaya as the new Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bhatturchaya is about as credentialed as anyone you could find with many accomplishments in the field, the greatest of which may have been to have led the way to sanity internationally during COVID as co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration.

Mr. Kennedy will undoubtedly make mistakes, as we all do, and many will be watching to correct them, but his overweening goal- to Make America Healthy Again—deserves the highest ;raise. With our embarrassingly low longevity numbers compared to other developed nations coupled with the fact we pay more for our healthcare than any, we are in clear need of a drastic course correction.

It’s going to be one difficult correction since an unholy percentage of our congresspeople suck at the teat of Big Pharma.

But bravo, Bobby. Go for it. We the People are behind you. MAHA!

UPDATE

I am writing this on very little sleep because Middle Tennessee, among other locations in the center of the country, has been under the most extreme tornado and flood watches in some years. Awakened by an alert before 2AM I finally got some shuteye closer to 5, only to wake up to find a different disaster had occurred to my—and nearly everybody else’s—stock account due to the president’s tariffs. He assures us this is transitory and will lead to a boom. I am agnostic about that, although I certainly hope he is right. Meanwhile, we do what we can. In Sheryl and my case, The Inoculator is beginning to grow. Stop by if you haven’t as the number of colleges increase. Different levels of service exist that you may find useful if you, a grandchild or a child is headed imminently for higher education. You can read about those offerings there.

Apropos, I don’t like to talk about my creative work until it’s finished, but my new novel ironically begins with a Nashville tornado. It is the most ambitious fiction I have ever attempted but I seem to be getting somewhere close to the end. When I do finish, I will pay more attention to this Substack and intend to monetize it then at what will be a very low level. I am more interested in readers than money at this point in my life (although I am human and not entirely disinterested in money). A few people have written me that should I monetize they will be unable to subscribe because they simply can’t afford to pay for Substacks. I want to assure them publicly that they will be automatically comped should they so wish, honor system only, no proof of need requested or faintly desired.