DeLauro Introduces the Responsibility in Drug Advertising Act
STRATFORD, CT (February 22, 2016) — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) today joined Connecticut Comptroller Kevin Lembo to announce the introduction of the Responsibility in Drug Advertising Act of 2016. The bill places a three-year moratorium on direct-to-consumer advertising of newly approved prescription drugs to fight the rising cost of prescription drugs and protect consumers from misleading information.
“The Responsibility in Drug Advertising Act is about protecting consumers from misinformation and advertising that promotes unnecessarily expensive prescription drugs,” said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. “At the end of the day, we should allow informed medical professionals, not advertising executives, to guide our healthcare spending. We must protect consumers from taking medications that may be unnecessary.”
“This legislation puts reasonable safety restraints on dangerous direct-to-consumer drug marketing. Prescription drug sales should be driven by thoughtful health care decisions between patients and their providers – not by aggressive drug marketers,” said Connecticut State Comptroller Kevin Lembo. “As the administrator of the state health plan, I recently acted to stop compound drug companies that cold called consumers across the state with sales pitches for untested and potentially unsafe compound drugs that threatened the safety and stability of the state health plan and its members. Strong federal action will give patients and health plans like ours broad protection against aggressive and unsafe drug marketing. I commend Congresswoman DeLauro for her continued leadership on this issue.”
Before the mid-1980s, drug companies only provided information about their products to doctors or pharmacists, who would relay information to their patients when appropriate. However, during the 1980s, companies started to market their drugs directly to consumers through ads. Currently, the United States and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow direct-to-consumer drug advertising. In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) made a strong recommendation against the practice, calling it “a significant risk of exposing more patients to the adverse effects of new drugs.”
Additionally, federal law does not require the FDA to approve advertisements before they are released to the public, meaning that ads often run with erroneous or misleading information. The FDA can take action against these companies, but only after the ads have aired and have been seen by the public, which can sometimes be too late. A study conducted two years ago at Dartmouth College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that nearly 60 percent of prescription drug advertisements are misleading or false, which puts consumers, families, and children at risk.
Further, increased spending on advertising contributes to the rising costs of prescription drugs. Spending on prescription drugs increased 13 percent last year to $374 billion. Doctors, who should be the leading authorities on prescription medicine, complain that these ads result in patients requesting specific, name-brand drugs they have seen on television, despite the fact that these drugs can be more expensive and may not be right for them.
DeLauro’s bill seeks to limit direct-to-consumer advertising of newly approved prescription drugs, which includes ads published in magazines and newspapers, or ads broadcast through television or radio. The bill provides an exception to the moratorium through the possibility of a waiver, if the drug in question is a breakthrough drug with affirmative value to public health.
###