Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1421

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Laucius J.
Consumer drug ads 'will hurt medicare'
Ottawa Citizen 2003 Sep 2

Full text:

OTTAWA — Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising has been creeping into Canada in recent years and will be expensive and potentially harmful if it continues, warns the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Drug companies in the U.S. spent $2.5 billion US on direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) in 2000, a 35-per-cent increase from 1999. But it has paid off, says an editorial in today’s edition of the influential journal.

“It has been claimed that each dollar spent on consumer advertising for the allergy drug Claritin has brought in $3.50 in increased sales.”

If U.S.-style DTCA were permitted in Canada, drug companies might spend $360 million a year and expect sales increases of $1.2 billion, the editorial extrapolated. “Those additional costs would be added directly to the cost of medicare.”

DTCA will be on the table again this fall as Ottawa considers changes to the Food and Drugs Act, said Barbara Mintzes with the University of B.C.‘s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research.

Mintzes, in an accompanying article, claims recent ads in Canada violate both the spirit and the letter of Canadian law governing drug advertising — yet complaints have put a stop to very little of it, she says.

Also, heavily-advertised drugs tend to be new so there is less information about their risks, she says.

“DTCA stimulates early uptake of these drugs in the marketplace, and, in the case of unforeseen harms, magnifies the dangers of their use.”