Direct To Consumer Advertising (DTCA)

Every year, drug companies spend 100s of millions of dollars on advertising alone, often exceeding expenditures on research and development (Wilkes et al, 2000). Compared to other industries, it is significantly reliant on promotional expenditures, often amounting to 20-30% of sales. Traditionally, promotional efforts for prescription medication were targeted exclusively to physicians, but the industry’s approach evolved over time, pushing towards advertising prescription medication directly to patients through television, magazines, internet, etc. This marketing strategy, known as direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) is regulated differently across the globe depending on the federal legislation in different countries.

The role of DTCA has generated a great deal of controversy and ethical concerns, such as the possibility of maximizing profit at the expense of clear and honest information provided to the public. Since advertising regarding medication has an influence on public’s decisions regarding something as serious as health, the need to present accurate information is especially crucial. This paper will review the debate on this topic and the regulatory systems that govern DTCA. The first section …show more content…
According to “Prevention Magazine”, more than 53 million consumers talked to their physicians about a medicine they had seen advertised, and an additional 49 million sought information form another source, such as the Internet. Conversations with doctors are vital for identifying diseases, especially since some of these may be serious conditions. For example, 8 million undiagnosed cases of diabetes exist among adults in the US, and only 10 out of 30 million of Americans with high cholesterol take cholesterol-lowering drugs (Holmer,