Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the power to stop pharmaceutical companies from advertising directly to consumers. He could do it almost instantaneously by revising the ’90s-era guidance giving drugmakers the opening to run 30-second TV ads on their products.
However, the Department of Health and Human Services is taking a different approach — one that indicates the matter is not as high on the Trump administration’s priority list as Kennedy told his supporters.
The Food and Drug Administration has posted its intent to require drugmakers to disclose all risk and safety information within ads instead of directing consumers to an external source — a way to effectively end television and radio drug ads by rendering them untenably long, experts say.
The push is through the traditional regulatory process. A senior administration official told NOTUS that the rule is “on the priority list” but there is no firm timeline to get it enacted.
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“I don’t take it seriously at all,” Lars Noah, a law professor at the University of Florida who focuses on pharmaceutical regulation, said of Kennedy’s pledge to ban drug commercials.
Two days before the 2024 general election, Kennedy promised to halt the prescription drug ads millions of Americans see on their screens every day.
“Let’s get President Trump back in the White House and me to DC so we can ban pharmaceutical advertising,” he wrote on X.
Last September, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum ordering HHS to go after pharmaceutical advertising. Forcing drug companies to report all the side effects in their advertisements “might create an advertisement that’s four minutes long,” Kennedy said at the time. The FDA also sent letters to dozens of pharmaceutical companies ordering them to either halt or revise ads the agency considers misleading.
But even as Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” report last year decried drug advertising, it stopped short of calling for a ban. And Kennedy himself has spent far more time talking about his efforts to prevent chronic disease with healthy eating and exercise in speeches around the country.
Nearly a year later, the drug industry’s ad spending continues to climb.
When Americans tune into cable and network news and sports games, they are increasingly likely to see ads for medications. Since Trump’s September memorandum, drugmakers have spent $5.2 billion on TV ads, according to an analysis provided to NOTUS by iSpot, a TV measurement company. That’s 8% more than the same period the year prior.
Top spenders over the past year were makers of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and drugs to treat psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. In February alone — the month of the Super Bowl — Novo Nordisk spent $33 million on an ad for the weight-loss drug Wegovy.
The industry fiercely opposes stricter rules on drug ads. Pharmaceutical commercials can bring in revenue five times the cost of making the ad, industry analysts say. Drugmakers, who court doctors to prescribe their medications, use commercials as a way to drive demand directly among patients.
“Clearly there is value to the companies that are buying these expensive ads, otherwise they wouldn’t do it,” Noah said.
The American Medical Association and other critics of pharmaceutical advertising say ads can mislead consumers by emphasizing the benefits of treatments while downplaying negative side effects. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen wrote Thursday to acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, urging the agency to ban direct-to-consumer advertising.
“The advertisements appeal to patients’ emotions, distract them, and distort their perceptions of a drug’s benefits and risks,” the letter said.
Kennedy, who believes too many Americans take medications instead of fixing their underlying health, says ads convince people they need medicines they don’t.
Such ads are confusing patients and “distorting the doctor-patient relationship” by causing people to think they need medications they don’t, the FDA notice says.
Drugmakers contend that existing regulations are sufficient.
“Direct-to-consumer advertising helps patients make informed prescription medicine decisions with their health care providers,” said Andrew Powaleny, deputy vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry association.
PhRMA has been lobbying against Trump’s memorandum and on a bipartisan bill from Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) that would create civil penalties for online influencers saying false or misleading things about prescription drugs, according to lobbying disclosure filings.
“If this administration is serious about wanting to address DTC advertisements, I welcome ways to work together to get it done,” Durbin said in a statement provided to NOTUS.
The United States is one of just two countries that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Ad spending spiked after 1997, when the FDA issued guidance allowing companies to summarize a medication’s risks briefly enough to fit into a 30-second TV spot.
Kennedy could easily rescind that guidance, experts said, although it would almost certainly be challenged in court by drugmakers. A federal judge blocked an effort during the first Trump administration to require ads to mention the drug’s price.
“I think it is unlikely that we will see drug advertising be totally banned under the current legal framework,” said Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Before entering office, however, that appeared to be a legal fight Kennedy was eager to get into.
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