Direct-to-consumer, or DTC, advertising of prescription drugs should be banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Public Citizen, an advocacy organization, said Thursday in a petition filed with the agency. Banning DTC ads would align U.S. policy with international best practices, protect the public from misleading and harmful drug promotion, and promote rational, evidence-based prescribing.
“DTC ads often mislead consumers because they are designed to persuade rather than to inform or educate patients,” Nina Zeldes, Ph.D., health researcher for Public Citizen and lead author of the petition, said in a statement. “These ads typically employ emotional manipulation techniques and visual distractions to highlight information about a drug’s benefits while minimizing its risks.
Zeldes said when DTC ads work, they do it by interfering with the doctor-patient relationship – persuading physicians to prescribe medications they otherwise wouldn’t have prescribed.
Research shows that DTC ads:
- Misleadingly present the benefits and risks of medications, distorting patients’ understanding of drug safety and effectiveness.
- Use favorable and selective imagery to manipulate consumers’ emotions.
- Contribute to the overdiagnosis of disease and overprescription of medications.
- Erode the patient-physician relationship.
- Promote low-value medications and medications with uncertain benefits and harms.
- Harm the economy and the health care system.
Because DTC advertising is often misleading and prohibiting it would advance a substantial government interest, a ban would comply with the First Amendment, according to the petition. Greater enforcement of existing regulations isn’t an adequate substitute for a new rulemaking. Warning letters react to violations that have already occurred; they aren’t a proactive approach to remedy the harms of DTC advertising.
“The harms of DTC ads outweigh any supposed benefits,” said Robert Steinbrook, M.D., health research group director at Public Citizen and an author of the petition. “Now is the time to advance public health by banning these ads.”
Nearly all other developed nations, including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and those belonging to the European Union, have long prohibited DTC advertising for prescription drugs that include medical claims.
Only two developed countries, the United States and New Zealand, allow unrestricted DTC advertising of prescription medications.
Steinbrook said there isn’t any evidence that consumers in countries that ban DTC advertisements suffer any adverse health effects.
