The Trump administration is mulling policies to make it more difficult and costly for pharmaceutical companies to promote prescription drugs directly to consumers. Big Pharma spends billions on advertising to promote sales, yet not all of its products are necessary or even safe, contributing to the overmedication of many Americans. Concerns about the industry’s excessive influence on news reports, enabled by their mighty purse strings, further motivate efforts to curb the incessant bombardment of ads for pills aimed at Americans.
Big Advertising by Big Pharma
Large pharmaceutical companies seek to sell new drugs ahead of generic competition and to persuade potential patients to ask their doctors to prescribe them. One study, led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, determined that companies spent significantly more on direct-to-consumer advertising dollars for drugs with low-added health benefits compared to drugs with high-added benefits. Previous research found that “direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) is associated with increased patient requests for advertised drugs and the increased chance that clinicians will prescribe them.”
Higher US drug prices yield massive corporate profits, which can be reinvested in higher sales through advertising. This also increases corporate power to affect news stories that may impact their business interests, as well as the wealth to influence regulatory procedures and laws that govern their operations. In 1997, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) disclosure rules restricting DTCA were relaxed so that companies were only required to alert customers to a product’s “most important risks.” More recently, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) had conflicts of interest because they received tens of thousands of dollars from drug companies while advising on public vaccine recommendations.
Congress banned cigarette advertising in the 1960s to protect public health. Legislation banning pharmaceutical advertising outright – as has been proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and others – would likely run afoul of First Amendment protections. Instead, Trump & Co. are rumored to be crafting rules that would make DTCA more expensive and difficult, particularly by changing FDA rules to mandate more full disclosures of potential drug risks (imagine how long those Viagra bathtub ads would be!) and removing IRS tax deductions for corporate advertising expenditures.
Not So Sweet for Americans
The US and New Zealand are the only nations in the world that permit massive Big Pharma companies to advertise directly to patients. Similarly, cereal companies advertise directly to children, causing indirect marketing pressure as kids clamor for Trix and roar for Frosted Flakes. Big Food companies directly target children under the age of 12, which studies find leads to greater household purchases of unhealthy cereals.
“Despite promises to only advertise healthier options directly to children and the availability of nutritious cereals in their product portfolios, cereal companies continue to market their least healthy products directly to children,” Jennifer Harris, senior research adviser at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut, said in a statement. “Our research provides strong evidence that discontinuing all advertising of nutritionally poor foods directly to children would likely negatively impact food companies’ bottom line, which explains why they appear to resist doing the right thing for children’s health."
Similar profit motives undergird Big Pharma’s incentives to push less vital drugs, skew news reports, and fund research at government agencies. These pressures have grown enormous – DTCA is big business!
Prescription drug brands accounted for about 13% of all ad spending on linear TV in 2025 and made up 24.4% of all advertising minutes on major network news broadcasts. Kantar Media reported that pharmaceutical companies appeared in more than 70% of commercial breaks on CBS Evening News.
Statista found that “the pharmaceutical industry spent 4.58 billion U.S. dollars on advertising on national TV in the United States” in 2020, 75% of all TV ad spending. Additionally, it reports that the health care and pharmaceutical industry spent $22 billion on US digital advertising, expected to reach $24.71 billion by the end of 2026, while Pfizer used $3.7 billion on advertising in 2023, including $437.27 million on television ads. Merck & Co. spent a total of $2.3 billion.
Will President Trump Deliver on MAHA?
Americans are tired of regulatory agencies being captured by corporations that prioritize financial gain over human health. HHS Secretary Kennedy promised while campaigning for president to use an executive order to ban television advertising. He has exposed conflicts of interest on the ACIP, where Dr. Oliver Brooks received nearly $44,000 from AI-powered biopharma company Sanofi. Brooks also criticized Kennedy for his removal from the Advisory Committee, stating, “To determine that the whole (advisory board), all 17 members, have conflicts of interest, that has not been shown by the evidence.”
Another fired panel member, Dr Bonnie Maldonado, allegedly participated in research involving COVID-19 vaccines that received $4.65 million in funding from Pfizer, as well as direct payments of $26,465 from Pfizer and nearly $7,000 from Merck.
Kennedy seems to be on the right scent for government accountability and delivering on campaign promises for both himself and President Trump.
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