Looks like there never was a federal law against drug ads in the US. I don't remember seeing any prescription drug ads until maybe the late 80s to mid 90s, when male pattern baldness and ED ads became prolific, starting us down the path towards remedies for diseases of affluence swallowing R&D funding:
I've been growing more concerned lately that today's youth might not be aware that things really were better just a few decades ago. I'm seeing a lot of mental gymnastics to rationalize behavior by big business that I consider indefensible.
Or to rephrase, I think that youth today do know that they are getting screwed, but for whatever reason, they often place blame on the wrong culprits. If we want to get back to the glory days, I feel that we need to revisit fundamental American values like truth, justice, civics, etc etc etc.
Or we can like, have even more billionaires and regulatory capture by multinational corporations taking us on an arrow's trajectory towards fascism. I can't even believe I have to write this, but that's how much the US has changed since I was young.
I think what happened in the past with drug and doctor ads is they "red-tided" themselves in the space by making themselves known as the source of disreputable patent medicine quacks such that advertising was shameful. The public, even with the worse transparency learned that they just didn't work. Like how infomercial products are often synonymous with overpriced and/or not working.
Part of why we aren't seeing that reoccur is that while expensive there is FDA regulation and the drugs more or less work even if there may be rightful concerns about side effects. They made sure they actually work so they rake in way more money than any small time quack.
Part of the issue with any return to glory days movement is that tradition is fundamentally a cargo-culted lie via induction. Traditions never were first done because they were tradition. The hard truth is the rot has always been there.
I wouldn’t merge physicians and pharmaceuticals in a conversation about ads.
Ads for the former remain rare in my experience. Supply is tight (imagine an ad to join a 10 month waiting list) and insurance coverage is the critical entry point in searches for a new provider ( that a mental health provider is buying ads is testament to the continued lack of mental health parity / vibrant cash market there ).
Pharma ads are older than the FDA itself which practically grew out of the snake oil market. What many people experience as the explosion in pharma ads is really a broadcast explosion. FDA guidance around balanced reporting of side effects changed in the late 90s such that the brief “this may kill you” was newly possible. Lots written about this, eg:
The impression I get from parts of the Internet that skew towards younger demographics (e.g. Reddit) is that the 30-something crowd realize that they've been given a raw deal and many of them do know that things were better for the median person in the past. They are divided on what the cause of the problem is, however, and far too many of them have latched onto the idea that solution to the cause of quality of life problems caused by the neoliberal revolution (i.e. Reaganism in the US) is to take society even further right into neoliberalism or into blood and soil white nationalism.
Looking younger, the 20-something crowd doesn't seem to have much of a clue about socioeconomic issues and only sees politics through the lens of racial/gender/sexual orientation/gender identity politics. Their indifference to economic issues may be driven by the fact that they aren't yet old enough to have real adult financial responsibilities. The side-effect, however, is that the idea that socioeconomic conditions for the median person were better in the past is outside their scope of understanding.
Sadly, I don't see a solution for either incorrect blame targeting by 30 year olds or indifferent ignorance by 20 year olds. How these people are educated and what they are exposed to by mass culture is determined by the billionaires, and the billionaires are very happy with a status quo that deflects blame for social decay to anyone and everyone but themselves.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/prescription-drug-advertising/back...
I've been growing more concerned lately that today's youth might not be aware that things really were better just a few decades ago. I'm seeing a lot of mental gymnastics to rationalize behavior by big business that I consider indefensible.
Or to rephrase, I think that youth today do know that they are getting screwed, but for whatever reason, they often place blame on the wrong culprits. If we want to get back to the glory days, I feel that we need to revisit fundamental American values like truth, justice, civics, etc etc etc.
Or we can like, have even more billionaires and regulatory capture by multinational corporations taking us on an arrow's trajectory towards fascism. I can't even believe I have to write this, but that's how much the US has changed since I was young.