Pushing Drugs
If selling “illegal substances” is a crime, what about legal drug pushers? Pharmaceutical manufacturers, that is. In 1997, the drug companies turned to aggressively hawking their products directly to consumers, after generations of leaving the need for drugs and their selection to medical professionals.
TV commercials and print ads urge the public to tell their doctors they want the prescription medicines that are being pushed. Buy Nexium, “The Purple Pill,” they say. It will fix your heartburn. Only now it’s called “acid reflux disease,” with all the potential dangers implied by the new name for that ominous affliction. Or, a pill that can help with “bipolar disorder,” “deadly artery plaque,” or perhaps some new “syndrome.”
Watching T.V. at night, we easily see ten or twenty commercials hustling drugs. All this aggressive marketing of drugs is perfectly legal. You can go to jail for smoking “weed,” but it’s OK to drug your children so they will behave themselves and, hopefully, learn, or take drugs yourself to deal with problems such as ED, prostate, artery plaque, arthritis, menopause, on and on ad infinitum.
But, watch out they tell us, droning on endlessly about the potential side effects of their products. Everything from gas to headaches to fainting to possible liver and kidney damage, on and on they warn – a veritable litany of the risks of taking their medications.
And, what has all this produced? An out-of-control drug culture, with mixed messages coming at us from every direction, confusing and misdirecting our attention, that’s what. Don’t “do drugs,” unless of course, they happen to be the drugs of choice that the drug companies are hustling.
The reason, of course, is obvious: It’s about increasing sales. And, it works.
From 1996 to 2005, the amount of money spent on advertising by drug companies increased from $11.4 billion to $29.9 billion. (The New England Journal of Medicine, August 16, 2007). A study by Elizabeth Ann Almasi (at Stanford University), “The Relationship between Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising and Prescription Rates,” included the following information:
“…prescriptions for the fifty most heavily advertised drugs grew at a rate six times greater (24.6%) than other drugs (4.3%) between 1999 and 2000.”
“Besides prescriptions, DTCA (Direct To Consumer Advertising) has also increased the demand for other forms of treatment. 14% of patients disclosed health concerns as a result of advertising.”
“A study by Murray (2004) found that 24% of all people scheduled a visit with their physician specifically to talk about a prescription drug advertisement.”
“Unfortunately, physicians also granted 12% of ad generated prescription drug requests in which they did not believe the therapy would be helpful.”
“Of the patients who recalled seeing a DTC advertisement, 94% remember television promotions, 62% recall newspaper and journal advertisements, and 22% recall radio spots (Kaiser Health Poll, 2005)”
“Spending on DTC is highly concentrated on products which generally treat chronic conditions and have a low incidence of side effects (Rosenthal et al, 2002).”
Z Magazine noted, “A survey of family physicians found that 71 percent felt DTC (Direct To Consumer) ads pressure doctors into prescribing drugs that they would not normally prescribe. And, according to a study by the Henry K. Kaiser Foundation, when patients request a specific drug, doctors prescribe it 44 percent of the time.’ “Z” also concluded that “ads are often for unnecessary or ‘lifestyle’ drugs that fuel the belief that there is a ‘pill for every ill.’ Drugs for thinning hair, toenail fungus, and other problems are heavily promoted while important inexpensive treatments, like water pills for high blood pressure, are ignored.”
The Department of Advertising, University of Texas at Austin, tells us, “…the First Amendment, places constraints on government repression of speech. Advertising is recognized by the courts as a form of ‘commercial speech.’ Commercial speech has been defined by the Court as speech ‘which does no more than propose a commercial transaction.’ Although the courts never have recognized it as being as valuable as some other forms of speech, commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment.”
So, what to do about all this? Should the government ban all Direct To Consumer Advertising (DTC) of drugs? Unfortunately, that’s not possible – because advertising is also considered free speech, and we can’t deprive the drug companies of their right to speak, that is, to advertise.
If DTC advertising can’t be banned, what can be done? Could the FDA counter the drug companies’ hype by educating the public to the fact that most of what is beamed our way is not intended to educate, so much as to scare potential customers? I don’t know, but my sense is, don’t count on it.
Nothing sells like fear, and marketing drugs directly to consumers is based on fear.
© 2008 Harris R. Sherline, All Rights Reserved
Questions About Senator Obama’s Speech
Senator Obama’s March 18 speech has stimulated more questions than answers and leaves open the matter of whether it adequately explains his 20-year relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, considering the Reverend’s many biased, inflammatory and prejudicial statements.
Obama: “I can no more disown him (Rev. Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community.”
Does disowning the “black community” mean that Obama must always accept any and all Blacks no matter what they may say or do? I can think of many people for whom I have no respect because of their values, beliefs or conduct, and I would not hesitate to distance myself from them with nary a thought that I might “disown” my own “community” in doing so.
Obama: “Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place…?”
Good question. The Senator explains it this way: “And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentator, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.”
However, that doesn’t adequately explain, at least to me, why Obama would willingly listen to the prejudiced rants of a pastor for 20 years, even if he has been “like family.”
Obama: “I can no more disown [Rev. Jeremiah Wright] than I can my white grandmother.”
Does this imply that there are no conditions under which any of us should “disown” a close relative: brother, sister, cousin, even a parent or grandparent? What if they abused you? What if they were just plain worthless? Must we always accept our relatives regardless of what they might have done to us or to others? I can think of plenty of reasons for disowning someone, and near the top of my list is that they are prejudiced to the point of being offensive.
Senator Obama also describes “Legalized discrimination – where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments…”
All true. But, this is also true of many other minority groups at various times in our history, including the present: The Poles (“Pollocks”), the Irish, Czechs, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Mexicans, Philippinos, American Indians, women and others. They have all experienced and many continue to experience prejudice. We can argue about the degree to which each group has been discriminated against, but they have all had to live with their share.
Obama’s speech contains appeals to the poor and underprivileged with such statements as, “But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans – the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family…we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Native American children…we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington…we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the h