If you grew up in the United States, you probably have lived most or all of your life seeing prescription medication advertised on billboards and T.V. commercials, but this was not always the case. Prior to the 1980’s, commercials for prescription drugs were no where to be seen in the United States. It was illegal, similar to most areas of the world today. If you are interested, there is a 9-minute Vox video entitled “How Americans got stuck with endless drug ads” (available below), that provides a great summary of the situation.

Just before drug advertising was legalized in the United States, many people were strongly expressing their opinion on the matter, both for and against it. R.T. Parfet, a chairman on the board of Upjohn (a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm), said that “direct advertising of prescription pharmaceuticals to consumers would be detrimental to the pharmaceutical industry.”

The argument in favor of drug advertising stated that it would help pharmaceutical companies provide consumers with more information, letting them make informed decisions on the best medication for that person, if any. In a perfect utopia, this sounds great, but there are some unintended consequences that develop in real world applications.

In an effort to shed more light on the unintended effects of advertising, Richard Pollay wrote “The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising.” Before we can look at how advertising is distorted, we must first look at the intended applications. Pollay argued that advertising served two main functions: to inform and to persuade. Applying this thought process to drug advertising, the intended effects are to: 1. Provide information to the general public with information on the drugs that currently exist and the problems they help to alleviate, and 2. Persuade you to take action and purchase the medication if it is something that will improve your life.

So, what are some of the unintended effects of advertising prescription drugs? The Journal of the American Medical Association did an experiment in 2005, and learned that people were much more likely to get a prescription for antidepressants if they mentioned a brand by name (presumably from seeing it in an advertisement). While this sounds like a good thing initially, it can be problematic if the drugs are given to those who did not end up needing it.

This connects back to an aspect of Pollay’s article that, to me, was the most interesting. In Figure 2, he provides a table that goes over some of the reasons that advertising is inherently flawed. For example, “because advertising it characteristically idealizing the good life”, then it is “perpetually dissatisfying.” Many prescription drugs targeted at older demographics try to appeal to their earlier years to increase sales, despite aging being a normal process that everyone goes through. While there are clearly both benefits and detrimental effects of drug advertising, it has been legal in the U.S. for so long it is difficult to predict the consequences of removing it.

References

Pollay, R. W. (2000). The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising