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Prescription Drug Advertising

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The United States occupies 4.34% of the world’s population, but accounts for 42% of global prescription drug spending, mostly because it is one of only two countries that allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements. However, these ads are targeting mostly healthy U.S citizens rather than citizens who will benefit from the drug, creating potential risks for many healthy individuals and thus, should be considered to be banned. For example, as with all commercials, the purpose of prescription drug ads is to persuade their viewers to buy the product, which includes targeting healthy people feel ill in order to make them in need of the product. In addition, a FDA survey of U.S. physician, 28% reported often feeling pressured to oblige …show more content…

As expected, soon as people started seeing those “ask your doctor” ads, people started to suspect they weren't as healthy as they thought. “The commercials don’t educate patients. Rather they create a demand for a product based on commercial than the patient's health,” stated a report in the book Our Daily Meds. In fact, the technique used in prescription drug ads can be seen on the symptoms the drug promotes to cure. The symptoms advertised to seek treatment are so broad and regular to humans that one may actually seek treatment for regular symptoms. For example, antidepressants such as Prozac, advertises symptoms of depression as feeling anxious, sadness or guilt, which are regular emotions in humans. As planned, healthy U.S. citizens diagnose themselves with the serious illness such as depression, costing plenty of money that goes right into the pharmaceutical company’s pockets while risking contracting harmful side-effects. Following the same logic of the banning of tobacco ads in the U.S., prescription drug ads should also be taken off the air. Banning these ads, U.S citizens will have less exposure to the competitive pharmaceutical drugs, which the only purpose is to sell their own products by making healthy people think they are unhealthy while putting the public health at risk and thus, decreasing unnecessary drug prescriptions. However, con this issue simply be solved by doctors …show more content…

But rather they promote higher cost of prescription drugs for profits of pharmaceutical companies, which are expensive to many patients who benefits outweigh the disadvantages, which makes consumers take harmful alternatives. A current example is EpiPens. Epipens have been used since 1977 and after Mylan bought EpiPens the cost was about $57 each. Later on,the prescription drug was aggressively advertised around the U.S., being the number one quick treatment for severe allergy attacks. In other words, it was the only well-known allergy attack treatment for many, allowing Mylan to increase the cost of their product. However, there are hurdles of competitors waiting to enter the market, and so the company increased the price again. As of May 2016, EpiPens have risen more than 450%, costing $600 a pack of two in the U.S. As a result, the poor can’t afford life-saving EpiPens and use cheaper but harmful alternatives, which results are not fully accurate. To clarify, due to the aggressive DTC prescription ads in the U.S on EpiPens it caused inflation to the product, not allowing many lives who need it be able to purchase it. Therefore, banning DTC prescription drugs in the U.S. will decrease the cost of products and thus, allow other opportunities than harmful or harder prescriptions for U.S. citizens to be able to purchase while decreasing the number of harmful drug

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