The New York Times reports:

Since the late 1990s, drug companies have spent tens of billions of dollars on television ads, drumming up demand for their products with cheerful jingles and scenes of dancing patients.

Now, some people up for top jobs in the incoming Trump administration are attacking such ads, setting up a clash with a powerful industry that has long had the courts on its side.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, is a longtime critic of pharmaceutical advertising on TV, arguing that it leads broadcasters to more favorable coverage of the industry and does not improve Americans’ health. He has repeatedly and enthusiastically called for a ban on such ads.

Elon Musk, who is spearheading a government cost-cutting effort, last month wrote on X, his social-media site, “No advertising for pharma.”

And Brendan Carr, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, said that his agency could enforce any ban that is enacted. “I think we’re way, way too overmedicated as a country,” he said.

The push against TV drug ads threatens to dent the revenues of pharmaceutical companies, which can make back in sales five times as much as they spend on commercials, according to some analysts. It could also create uncertainty for major television networks, which bring in substantial revenue from pharmaceutical advertisers trying to reach older viewers, who tend to take more medications.

Though it’s not clear how such a ban might happen — Mr. Kennedy has called for an executive order — any attempt would face an uphill battle. Efforts to modestly restrict drug ads have repeatedly been defeated in the courts, often on First Amendment grounds. The first Trump administration tried to require that commercials mention the drug’s price, but a judge blocked the move, saying that it lacked authority from Congress.

“No one’s putting the genie back in the bottle at this point,” said Dr. David Kessler, who was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s.

Modern drug ads aimed at consumers began appearing in newspapers and magazines in the 1980s. But for years, they were mostly kept off TV by a requirement that ads naming a specific illness include a litany of information about possible side effects.

In 1997, after Dr. Kessler left and amid growing concern that the restriction violated the First Amendment, the F.D.A. relaxed its rules, allowing drug advertisers to briefly summarize the product’s risks.

In subsequent years, pharmaceutical companies’ spending on TV advertising exploded. In the early 2000s, Merck’s TV ads helped make the painkiller Vioxx a blockbuster before it was taken off the market for raising the risks of heart attacks and strokes. More recently, a flood of TV ads have helped generate demand for “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic” from Novo Nordisk and other powerful drugs that have transformed the treatment of obesity.

The pharmaceutical industry is on track to spend over $5 billion on national television advertisements this year, according to iSpot.TV, a company that tracks ads. The most aggressive campaigns are for newer medications that haven’t yet gone generic but compete in a crowded field of similar drugs to reach patients with common conditions like arthritis and diabetes.

Research has found that the majority of the top-advertised drugs offer little to no medical benefit compared to existing treatments. Many cost tens of thousands of dollars per year. [Continue reading…]