Drug Ads Spur High Sales of Medications

B O S T O N, Sept. 20 -- You can’t escape the television ads promising a cure for whatever ails ya: Paxil for the socially anxious. Xenical for the overweight. Claritin for the eternally stuffed up. And Propecia for the follicle-challenged.

According to a new report, these ubiquitous commercials hawking a variety of prescription drugs to consumers have been wildly effective, helping drive the rise in sales of these medications.

While pharmaceutical manufacturers say these ads are simply providing potential patients valuable medical information, insurance companies and some doctors believe the ads are creating an inappropriate demand for new, costlier and often unnecessary drugs.

Popular Drugs Heavily Advertised

In the report, released today by the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, a health care policy group based in Washington. D.C., researchers found an association between the advertising of drugs and their sales: 25 of the most heavily advertised drugs accounted for 40 percent of the rise in spending on drugs last year. The government and the Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance company support the institute.

Schering-Plough, manufacturers of the popular allergy medicine Claritin, for example, spent $185 million on ads in 1998, and saw a 20 percent rise in sales the following year, from $2.1 billion in 1998 to $2.6 billion in 1999, the report says.

“Advertising is one piece of the puzzle why prescription drug sales are going up,” says Steven Findlay,the institute’s research and policy director. “The fear here is whether this is driving people to get more expensive medicines they may not really need.”

Direct drug marketing to consumers has been controversial since the Food and Drug Administration relaxed rules in 1997 allowing the practice, ushering in an era of billboard, TV, magazine, and radio ads hawking the new “glam” drugs.

High-profile spokesmen such as Joan Lunden for Claritin; Lauren Hutton for Premarin, a popular hormone replacement therapy, and Bob Dole for Viagra, the drug for “erectile dysfunction” famously promote the products.