History of Drug Marketing
Pharmacuetical companies were not always allowed to directly market to consumers. In 1906 the FDA got regulator power over medications. The in 1911 the supreme court ruled that drug marketers had to provide the ingredients in their drugs to the consumers. By 1967 phramacuetical companies were required to provide detailed information to consumers. Up until the 1990's marketing of drugs was focused towards phycisians. In the 1990's however, pharmacuetical companies began to market directly to consimers. Lots of problems came with this. Pharamceutical companies did not focus on disking the risks of the drug in their ads and would mislead people about the benefits of the drugs.
FDA Rules for Pharmaceutical Ads
There are three kinds of ads: product claim ads, reminder ads, and help-seeking ads. Product claim ads are any ad that names the drug and talk about the pros and cons of it. Reminder ads names the drug but doesn't talk baout the purpose or use of the drug. This ad is made based on the assumption that the viewer already knows what the drug does. This is just a reminder of its existance. A helping seeking ad gives information about a health condition or disease, but doesn't recommend a treratment. The idea is to get the viewer to talk to their doctor. The regulations placed on these ads vary. The rules are the most strict for product claim ads. These ads are not allowed to provide any information that is false or misleading. They must include the brand name, generic name of drug, and one or more uses of the drug, and its risks. The list of pros and cons must be balanced. On TV the risks must be said allowed; they are not allowed to be printed on the screen. Drugs that have bad enough risks get classified as "black box" and can't be promoted through reminder ads. Help seeking ads have no regulations as long as they don't mention any specific drug. Despite all these regulations pharamcuetical companies have still been able to mislead consumers and doctors which has cost many people their lives.
Marketing to Physicians
There are too often shady dealing when it comes to advertising drugs to doctors. Before 2002 the job of Pharam sales reps was to "wine and dine" docotrs. Sales reps would take doctors out to facny dinners, sports events, and pay for fancy vacations. In 2002 The Trade Organization of Pharmaceutical Companies publushed guidelines for interacting with healthcare professionals. Now a lot of sales reps try to sell to doctors by asking them to be a paid speaker for the company. Basically they pay the doctors to promote the drug. This is legal but a less than ehtical method of promoting a drug. Drug companies have billion to spend on promoting their drugs and will use whatever tactics they can to sell their drugs (good, bad, or otherwise).
Pros And Cons of Direct To Consumer Advertising
There are lots of pros and cons of direct to consumer advertising. Those who support it, which includes big pharamacuetical companies, calim that these ads promote better health by informing the public. They say that more information allows patients to be more open with their doctors and that the ads help to reduce the stigma behind getting help with many illnesses and conditions. Critics argue that even when following FDA regulations the ads are too often misleading. They paint a better picture of how the drug can benefit the consumer while downplayng the risks. These ads also often lead to drug abuse and use of more expensive ads when cheaper ones can be used. Many people argue that direct to consumer advertisement is a big part of what caused the opioid crisis. Whether this is true or not is a topic that is often debated and has no one right answer.
www.recallreport.org/prescription-drug-marketing/.
I agree that this is a serious problem. A lot of the time sales reps are trying to hit their numbers for the quarter and are willing to sometimes be immoral with their practices if it means they reach it. Reading this really reminded me of Oxycontin (Opiate) epidemic and all the trouble Purdue Pharmaceuticals as gotten into recently. I'm sure that pharmaceutical sales reps often embellish to potential buyers, but in the case of Oxycontin, the sales reps were downplaying the addictiveness to the physicians who then prescribed them to the patients, causing hundreds of thousands of people to become addicted.
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered why pharmaceutical companies even bother to advertise their drugs when their ads target a very specific audience. There's certainly a trade off that is made when advertising to consumers vs doctors: consumers aren't as educated as doctors about the technical aspects of a drug so they may be more likely to be swayed by marketing, while doctors may be swayed by the monetary incentives you mentioned in your article. An example of this I am familiar with is the over-prescription of certain psychotropic drugs to foster kids by bribed doctors. It makes sense from a marketing perspective to market directly to the consumer because they are likely easier to convince than doctors. For this reason, pharmaceutical companies show happy adults and children running around with cheerful background music while listing out all the side effects (as mandated by guidelines) with the hope of evoking positive feelings in their audience and that they will bring it up with their doctor.
ReplyDeleteThis type of advertising has had a really large effect on the Opioid crisis in America. The cushy "promoter" jobs that were mentioned in this post were often highly paid and paid attention to. This allowed the pharmaceutical industry to pay doctors to convince other doctors that these products were effective. Specifically with opioids, the largest marketing tactic that was used was to point to opioids being much less addictive than typical painkillers. (though this was completely false) This type of advertising not direct marketing to the consumer, so it was easier to make false claims like this, and this issue that you brought up was a significant contributor to the opioid crisis.
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