Acquiring prescription drugs is something that most Americans have grown familiar with. After all, how could we ignore such a privilege?
These drugs are being advertised on a range of television networks and other forms of media. Bright, colorful pills appear on the pages of magazines. They’re blown up and magnified to thousands of times their actual size on billboards.
Prescription drugs have woven their way so deep into the fabric of American society that we hardly see them as anything out of the ordinary.
Their presence has been cemented into our daily routine, whether we’re actually taking them or not.
A lot of Americans might be surprised to learn that only two countries in the entire world, the U.S. and New Zealand, allow any direct-to-consumer, or DTC, advertising of prescription drugs.
Looking closer, it’s easy to see why other nations refuse to jump on the bandwagon.
Big Pharma contends that their ads have good intentions. They claim the ads educate consumers and provide them with knowledge of drugs that could improve their health or better their situation.
But DTC advertising generally misleads consumers. It’s working against the masses. They market the pills as treatments to symptoms, rather than the diseases themselves.
Ads for prescription drugs can be seen as nothing more than clever sales pitches.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, in 2007 the pharmaceutical industry spent an estimated $4.8 billion on advertising for prescription drugs directly to the U.S. consumer.
In 2008, Big Pharma was a $291 billion industry.
NPR reported, “In the last decade, prescription drug use in the U.S. has risen to the point that 48.3 percent of people take at least one prescription medicine.”
Like some of the medications themselves, DTC advertising has a lot of terrible side effects. The truth is that these ads don’t aim to educate Americans; they aim to sell to Americans, and just like any other form of advertising, they manipulate and create false impressions to turn a profit.
This means that many Americans, desperate for cures to their ailments, will often decide on a medication based not on its actual effectiveness, but on the effectiveness of the advertisement.
Furthermore, these DTC ads encourage prescription drug use for many conditions that are better remedied with simple changes to a patient’s diet and exercise routine, or with other preventative measures.
Worse, Big Pharma can use DTC advertising to fabricate health scares of diseases that aren’t really diseases at all.
In the past few years, conditions like insomnia, obesity and stress-related psychosomatic illnesses like restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia have been relabeled “diseases.” A whole slew of medications have launched for ‘treatment.’
America’s obsession with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) certainly hasn’t waned either — in fact it has exploded — especially with the recent introduction of adult ADHD.
These patients often report experiencing more side effects than improvement, and I can’t say I’m surprised.
The danger can be seen on our own campus, where just a few weeks ago many students weathered their final exams and projects by routinely popping Adderall, Ritalin or other neuro-enhancing, amphetamine salt-based drugs.
Off prescription, these pills keep the user awake and focused, but they carry a high potential for abuse and dependency along with an unsettling list of side effects.
Big Pharma has been stuffing its wallet for decades while Americans aren’t getting the treatment or the information they deserve.
Perhaps the industry should work on getting a prescription for its own sickness.
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu
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