> I think society would benefit immensely from banning the advertising of drugs.

This is already the case in many places outside the USA (Canada, Europe, Brazil, Hong Kong).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-to-consumer_advertising

I believe the list is shorter if you make it about which countries allow direct-to-consumer advertising:

USA, New Zealand.

That's it.

Indeed. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in New Zealand has a code of practice for Therapeutic and Health Advertising (below). My father was running the ASA when this came in, and NZ and the USA were the only 2 countries with D2C ads for pharmaceuticals.

The advertising amount and impact in NZ is a lot lower than in the US as our healthcare system is largely public (government funded) with a single buyer (Pharmac) of pharmaceuticals that exercises considerable pricing power, and is unafraid to change brands. Most of us go to the doctor and take what is prescribed.

https://www.asa.co.nz/codes/codes/therapeutic-and-health-adv...

The marketing is dispicable in NZ.

For example, I loath that they advertise paracetamol (acetaminophen) as "better for the stomach" directly targeting Aspirin and other NSAIDS. No mention of how many peoples livers get permanently fucked by paracetamol.

Unfortunately the advertising propaganda is successful, and people avoid safe drugs that have side effects that can be managed. Evil.

GP is talking about all drugs, not just prescription drugs.

Word of mouth or "personal research" is a really ineffective way to discover what drugs are suitable for you. It might be better than TV advertising, but that's a pretty low bar to set. You can understand the desire for a compromise solution like "TV advertising, but you can't lie about it too much and you have to mention side effects". And that is more or less the US status quo.

Nobody needs to discover what drugs are suitable for them. This is medicine, not a restaurant menu.

If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments.

The status quo "compromise" solution gets this exactly backwards. "This drug will make your life better. So ask your doctor so they'll comb through your medical records and history looking for something kind of like what we claim to treat[1], so they can prescribe our drug for you." Lies and failure to mention side effects are not the only problem with advertising. The problem with advertising is that it seeks to persuade people, using every trick in the book short of actionable lies and omissions, to buy drugs that even doctors can't properly evaluate because drug research is pathologically flawed. And those advertising tricks are effective at getting people to buy drugs which they don't need and which will do harm, because most drugs do some kind of measurable harm whether it's potential liver or kidney damage or increased risk of dementia or cardiovascular problems or cancer or whatever.

Pharma companies that seek to extract rent from your "conditions" are the last entities you want telling you what you might have, and they're the least trustworthy entities to be allowed to get you thinking that their drug might be your best option for treating your "condition" because you heard about theirs first and they made sure their advertisement stuck a bunch of positive associations to it in your mind.

"Ask your doctor about our drug instead of asking for advice on whether other things, including exercise, eating better, and getting better sleep might help, because those take time and effort and you have no time and no willpower except when you're dancing in a field of flowers like we showed you doing when our drugs solve all your problems so you should pay us rent for life for your 'medical condition'."

[1] Have you noticed most drug advertisements don't even claim to treat anything specific, or are intentionally vague? The charitable explanation is that the condition is often something taboo or embarrassing, but I think a bigger part of the reason is that pharma doesn't want you losing interest in the drug before you ask your doctor about it.

> If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments

I know at least a few people who didn't realize they had an ailment until seeing the symptoms listed on an ad. There is a balance between promoting new drugs (and the affiliated afflictions) to the general public and pushing medicines to doctors.

In Australia you're allowed to advertise about the existence and symptoms of medical conditions just not to recommend any specific treatment other than "talk to your doctor". The pharmacist is also obliged to offer generic versions of drugs at purchase.

I think that’s a good compromise.

BTW, it’s actually pretty common in many US states for pharmacists to be required by law to fill prescriptions with their generic equivalents.

That's because medical companies made it up to sell more drugs. Restless leg syndrome wasn't a thing until pharma starting pushing drugs for it.

Legit palsey is a completely different story.

Well this country's medical system is too bad to even begin to try to do preventative medicine. (You can think of it as a 400 million person medical poverty trap. We all live in medical poverty.)

We're that fixed you would learn about conditions you didn't know you had from the doctor. Or therapist.

I think that almost immediately ends up in a morass of private information web sites, none of which are as trustworthy as current FDA-regulated labeling.

Do you prefer Instagram "influencers" to have more control over what drugs people take than the current regulated advertising? I don't.

I don't think they would. Do they currently have instagram drug influencer in Europe, where direct-to-consumer drug advertising is illegal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-to-consumer_advertising

I would think that pharma companies currently instead just advertise in American media and trust that the word will get over to consumers in Europe...

No, they send doctors on symposiums to the Caribbean.

> where direct-to-consumer drug advertising is illegal?

The US and New Zealand are the only countries where direct-to-consumer advertising is legal.

Isn't the opioid crisis caused by sales reps directly marketing to doctors and promising benefits that didn't really exist (lower risk of addiction, lower dosis required for certain amounts of time)? Not sure how removing marketing to consumers changes the situation.

In my view it is that combined with the welfare reform act. Once welfare was limited to 5 years people moved to SSDI to receive payments, opiate drugs became more popular and now we have a system when the government will pay you and give you heroin if you jump through the right hoops. As we have effectively subsidized addiction it shouldn't be surprising that it has increased dramatically.

I think beer should be considered food, but otherwise I can get on board with this.

Gruits were medicinal herbal meads - funny to think that in not-so-distant history, a doctor may have prescribed one of several "medicinal beers".

It's interesting how molecules can be considered 'food', 'medicine' or 'poison' in different contexts.