Lindsay Hamberg
Professor Michele Martis
ENG 112
14 October 2015
Prescription Drugs in Today’s Media Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs has quickly become a part of everyday life in the United States in the past few decades. Advertisements for these drugs can be found everywhere you look including television commercials, magazines, newspapers, the internet, radio, pamphlets or posters in waiting rooms at doctors’ offices and more. The pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars a year on these advertisements alone. Some people might think that this form of advertising has no negative effects, but in reality it’s full of them. They can misinform patients and encourage over medicating as well as damage the relationship …show more content…
This often misinforms patients by leading them to believe exaggerated results or it may be lacking information on the full extent of all side effects. A study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine states that “The study found 43% of the claims in DTC drug ads were "objectively true” while 55% were "potentially misleading” and 2% were "false.””. The federal Food and Drug Administration, which is also known as the FDA, oversees all of the advertisements of prescription drugs in the United States. One might think that these ads must pass through certain requirements before being broadcasted, but in reality they are often given to the FDA to be approved at the same time that they are released to the public. According to an April 2013 survey, 68% of doctors agreed that prescription drugs are marketed before safety profiles can be known (ProCon). Thus creating some uncertainties on how safe the drug really …show more content…
New Zealand’s population only consists of a little over four million people. Writers of the ProCon website stated that, “The United States is 5% of the world’s population but accounts for 42% of global prescription drug spending.” (ProCon). There are some people that view this form of advertising as a disgusting and dishonorable way of sales. The pharmaceutical companies that sell these drugs want to expand their market of buyers into other countries. This would then include them broadcasting their advertisements to people all over the world. The World Health Organization bulletin Direct-to-consumer advertising under fire stated that, “In the countries of the European Union any hopes pharmaceutical companies had in this regard were recently ruined when 22 of the 27 European Union member states came out against the “information to patients” strand of a European Commission proposal for new pharmaceutical legislation”. This is just an example of one continent’s feedback. So far, no other countries have fallen for their proposals and legalized it