President Donald Trump has once again done what few in Washington have dared to do: he’s taken on deceptive and dishonest Big Pharma practices and sided squarely with the American people.
Last month, Trump issued a presidential memorandum directing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., to require pharmaceutical companies to fully disclose every possible side effect in their direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. While Big Pharma whined that this was a speech control measure, in reality, it is a restoration of basic standards of truth and accountability in advertising. By demanding full transparency, Trump is protecting the public by prohibiting drugmakers from engaging in manipulative marketing.
For nearly three decades, this problem has been growing. In the 1990s, Americans heard the full list of potential side effects every time a new drug was advertised. It wasn’t flattering, but it was honest – and it reminded people that powerful medicine carries real risks.
Then, in 1997, the FDA quietly loosened the rules, allowing companies to cherry-pick a few warnings and direct consumers elsewhere for the fine print. That bureaucratic “streamlining” turned out to be carte blanche for Big Pharma to flood American TV screens with emotional, one-sided sales pitches.
And flood they did. Year after year, drug advertising budgets have climbed, surpassing $10 billion last year. Roughly half of that money flowed straight to television networks – a financial lifeline for struggling media companies that bought not just airtime, but influence throughout the entire newsroom.
The voices that once held Big Pharma corporations accountable became dependent on their ad dollars. Any networks that threatened to expose the potential harms of medications risked losing millions from drug companies. Big Pharma began determining the national conversation about health, while everyday Americans were left with only half the truth.
President Trump’s memorandum takes square aim at this corrupt relationship. By reinstating full disclosure rules reminiscent of the 1990s, he’s calling Big Pharma’s bluff. If these companies truly believe in their products, they should have no fear of telling the whole story, side effects and all. If they refuse, it reveals that their ads were really about manipulation, not education. Trump’s message is that honesty is not optional when it comes to public health.
HHS under Kennedy has enthusiastically embraced this new directive. “Pharmaceutical ads hooked this country on prescription drugs,” Kennedy said in a statement. “We will shut down that pipeline of deception and require drug companies to disclose all critical safety facts in their advertising. Only radical transparency will break the cycle of overmedicalization that drives America’s chronic disease epidemic.”
“For far too long, the FDA has permitted misleading drug advertisements, distorting the doctor-patient relationship and creating increased demand for medications regardless of clinical appropriateness,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary added. “Drug companies spend up to 25 percent of their budget on advertising. Those billions of dollars would be better spent on lowering drug prices for everyday Americans.”
Along with using new tools like AI to identify deceptive ad practices, the FDA also says that it plans to “aggressively” deploy enforcement mechanisms that have fallen out of use in recent years. For instance, the FDA previously sent “hundreds” of warning letters to Big Pharma companies each year about their ads. Under Biden, the FDA sent just one warning letter in 2023 and zero in 2024. Now, the FDA plans to send “thousands” and issue “approximately 100 cease-and-desist letters to companies with deceptive ads.”
America remains nearly alone among developed nations in allowing direct-to-consumer advertising at all. In Europe, Canada, and most of Asia, direct-to-consumer prescription ads are banned outright. Those countries have placed their trust in doctors, not marketing executives, to guide patient care.
It’s far from a perfect system, but it’s objectively more honest than allowing companies with a financial interest in selling as many prescriptions as possible to use whatever strategies they want to market their drugs to consumers. The current drug marketing system plays a major role in driving overprescription, inflating prices, and distorting patient expectations.
Trump’s directive will dramatically improve integrity in drug marketing. It reverts back to an era when companies earned trust through transparency rather than buying it with billions in ad spending. The reform respects free enterprise while re-anchoring it in accountability, striking the right balance between innovation and honesty.
It could also help heal the physician-patient relationship, long corroded by corporate interests that profit from confusion and dependency. When patients walk into the doctor’s office already convinced by a thirty-second commercial that “Drug X” is the answer, the conversation shifts from medicine to salesmanship – particularly when doctors get kickbacks from drug companies. That inversion undermines doctors’ authority and turns clinical decisions into consumer negotiations.
Trump’s memorandum helps reverse that distortion. Patients and physicians can weigh benefits and harms more deliberately. The result is healthier skepticism and better-informed decisions by patients.
Once again, Trump is demonstrating what real leadership looks like: bold enough to challenge powerful interests, principled enough to defend the public, and patriotic enough to remember that the government’s primary responsibility is to everyday people, not deep-pocketed corporate interests.
W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple political campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government. In his free time, he enjoys the “three R’s” – reading, running, and writing.
How about going all the way and removing drug marketing altogether
I believe the US and one other nation [I think New Zealand] allow drug companies to advertise on TV and radio. Think of all the money they spend on ads and then charge extra for their drugs to recoup money. Plus, they tout the drug loudly and put all the possible bad effects in miniature print or read it so quickly you can’t decipher what they are saying!
I thought they were going to ban drug advertisements? The colleges need to get back to teaching the truth about health, including many more classes on nutrition and how the body works together. The pharmaceutical companies control the education and thus the doctors are taught to prescribe drugs for everything. Homeopathy used to be the way and now it’s considered alternative and not covered.
If the pharmaceutical companies stopped wasting all of that money on ads they could lower the cost of the drugs so they would be affordable to us.
My wife and I only take what is required by our doctor. When we do watch medical ads. how can anyone take a medicine that has so many side effects? Big Pharma overall, is still not to be trusted.
Does anyone know why so many hate the President? They hated him before he became President the first time. Was it because he was not a politician? Now he is, and doing a damn good job, but they still hate him. I see so many posts from people calling him all sorts of names, saying he tells lies about everything, but they cannot list one single lie when put on the spot. So why does it continue? People’s brains have been bent.
I often wonder how many people are REALLY influenced by these Big Pharma ads. I would NEVER suggest ANY drug to my PCP or any other medical professional for that matter. End Big Pharma ads and lower drug prices instead.
So what about COVID vaccines? All companies that produce COVID vaccines should be required to list all side effects based on current studies. These were indeed very deadly and crippling vaccines
Just one more example (of thousands) where President Trump has SHOWN, THROUGH ACTION, that he truly cares about the safety, health and well being of ALL Americans.
With the corrupt Big Pharma and the equally corrupt FDA (and many corrupt doctors on the take), it’s ALL ABOUT MONEY, GREED, AND POWER.
And with money there’s corruption, with lots of money there’s absolute corruption. It’s NOT hard, not rocket science to connect the dots. That’s called COMMON SENSE.
I thought Kennedy was going to ban all Big Pharma adds. This would be thoe most effective. Americans are tired of seeing these adds
That automatically means that Democrats have to come out for deception and big pharma ads! Whatever Trump is for they have to be against. I wonder if he came out for the Democrat party if they would take a stance against it?
Maybe stop the pharmaceutical ads entirely! They are just added costs to consumers. Same with all the ambulance chasing attorney ads. These multi-million dollar awards jyst add to insurance costs.
My opinion.
To many politicians are in bed with Big Pharma, they need to be outed and not re-elected! Indiana has one of the biggest in Senator Todd”Eli Lilly” Young. I’m pushing for Attorney General Todd Rokita to run for Senate in 2028, he and Governor Braun our true leaders.
Not much difference betweedn “whisky” ads and “drug ads; both disgusting and both should be banned.
Wow. Thank you president Trump. Again leadership is shown. Big Pharma was dictating for too long. To doctors and patients with their slick ads on tv. The FDA had lost all control
over the pharmaceutical companies. We have become slaves by demanding this new drug advertised on tv. The next step should be no advertising of drugs on tv. The health business has become a huge for profit business. Having worked at a clinic with various physicians and seen the drug salesmen at work it ain’t pretty and this was back in the 1970’s. More control over big Pharma is needed and this is a first step. In Europe no drug commercials are allowed. The cost of the drugs are much much lower than here and drug companies help the patients with the cost of many drugs. As well as many drugs have not been allowed to be dustritibuted in Europe. The FDA is much too lax to allow new drugs to be sold to the public. We have become a nation of drug takers for every thing that ails us. Big Pharma knows this from there the slick ads and the side effects are overlooked. The left hates RFKJr because big Pharma lines their pockets every time a new drug comes out. Thank you president Trump for again exposing the crooked politicians on the left who are killing us slowly with the help of big Pharma and the food industry.
The doctor I went to 20 years ago told me the internet and TV are NOT friends of doctors OR patients. Every little old person coming in, after “researching” their symptoms, are convinced they are pregnant/have the plague/dead/dying/buried/Republicans/OR have a crummy doctor because they won’t prescribe the stuff they, the patients, saw last night on TV.
And for the last 3 or 4 POTUS election cycles we have heard about how the (vast) majority of our prescription drugs COME FROM CHINA! When is THAT going to stop?! Biden (I’ll wait for the laughter to stop here) said he was going to REPLACE TRUMP because TRUMP wouldn’t fix that problem. Then, Biden discovered ice cream and forgot everything else. Just did what Jill told him.
Maybe someday we will make stuff in the USA. I’m almost 74 yeas old, but I remember when we used to make stuff HERE! Alas and alack…..(smh while looking down)
My father was a small town doctor I NY a generation ago. He was very much against any medical advertising, including for medical groups, hospitals, doctors and pharmacy. The whole thing is misleading, fear-inducing and often incorrect. ALL advertising for anything medical should be outlawed. They do much more harm than good. Mention a para ad to my doctor and she rolls her eyes. That says it all.
I would support ads for a cure for TDS! The side effects are common sense, patriotism, happiness and hope for the future!
Need to stop all advertising of suppliments that the FDA has not tested and approved.
Drug advertisements are on TV and radio 24/7. I hope President Trump can stop big pharma from this type of marketing. Should be between your doctor and you not money hungry Pharma and greedy politicians.
I believe that all to many of we users of prescription drugs, do not read the “side effects” of the medication thats written in small print with the purchased prescription. I am blessed to only meds for a one time cure, such as antibiotics for a tick bite, as an example, but I do know that there are medications for a variety of conditions, and these warnings are in the bag, when you pick up the meds at the pharmacy.
If you want a medication because its advertised on you favorite media, you should get your doctor’s advice.
How Trump has been able to do so much is amazing; he’s been constantly badgered and berated !! He is the best president and leader of this country EVER !!!
Do you remember all those drug salesman who used to show up at Dr’s. Offices and Dr’s who used to give away ‘”samples ” I do- so that was stopped and TV marketing was started. Big pharma will figure something else out because really, it’s all about the money.
My favorite line in all these dumb-ass drug commercials:
“Don’t take XYZ if you’re allergic to any of it’s ingredients.”
Like how the hell are we supposed to know
A) what’s in the drug and
B) if we’re allergic to it.
One step st a time, Trump is getting it done. Boy, I’m glad he’s my president.
EYE want the ads to stop. They are, in some instances, terrifying. And how do parents explain to questioning children why is that carrot bent? etc., etc.
Speaking of ads that should be banned, what about insurance company ads adverting “FREE” stuff. They spends multi BILLIONS every year advertising Medicare plans with all the extra “FREE” benefits that we all pay for when they receive government tax payer funded subsidies to pay for all the “FREE” stuff.
Why do drug companies advertise prescription drugs on TV? Certainly the medical profession is well aware of these drugs and most people have more confidence in their doctors opinion than in a TV ad. For some of these drugs the potential user base is so small, there is no way to justify the advertising. What Big Pharma is doing, is buying the goodwill of the TV broadcasters and cable companies, in hope they will think twice about running a story harmful to Big Pharma. In truth, Big Pharma, in its pursuit of outrageous profits, after buying a host of politicians, now has bought the national media.
Halleluiah and Hooray for DJT. It’s been too long that the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies have been in bed together trying to eek out every penny they can on imported, horrific drugs. If there were drugs made in this country to the US standards, the pharma couldn’t go peddling them to doctors like free candy! It’s a good day for people that are now sick from insufficient medications thrown on the market and advertised on tv to be the next miracle cure to “ask your doctor for!”. American people have become so drug dependent that they don’t even care if they are taking twenty or thirty pills A DAY! They just blindly follow what the “doc” says when they show up for their appointment and their insurance company pays for it, or they get the new drug for FREE from their doctor. We the people have become the new “lab mice” for big pharma. We try the new drugs and get sick and die, but the drugs are on the market quickly without the FDA approved wait time for trial studies to be made. Did you ever watch tv and write down every new drug that just came on the market??? I did and in the course of ONE YEAR, thirty-two new drugs were advertised on tv. A few years later, all the class action suits for these new drugs began appearing as well. Think back to when you were a young child. All that was in the family medicine cabinet was aspirin, Vicks, iodine, Vaseline, and baby oil. Now your medicine cabinet has overflowed to the kitchen cabinets, kitchen countertops and bathroom countertops. It’s insanity.
Does anyone actually think that if big pharma included all the side effects of the Covid vaccine, the masses would have run to take the jab when it was “experimental”? Many people aren’t that stupid. I love it when the TV adds say “ask your doctor if this is right for you”. If my doctor hasn’t recommended it or doesn’t know about it, why should it matter?
I would like us to join the listed countries and completely ban pharmaceutical advertising directly to consumers
.
America remains nearly alone among developed nations in allowing direct-to-
consumer advertising at all. In Europe, Canada, and most of Asia, direct-to-
consumer prescription ads are banned outright.
I would also like to have the advertising no longer tax deductible. If you aren’t going to make money from advertising, DONT ADVERTISE. No more advertsiing deductions!
With the totally disgusting and misleading ads – especially for prescriptions – it is too bad that big pharma can’t be legally charged for trying to play doctor without a license. They have changed their historic public image of offering a tool of support to everyone involved in the healing arts to one of better living through chemistry with the possibly of encouraging and reinforcing the national illegal drug problems across the nation. God bless the one who invented the mute button!
AOC should read this article. She’s always trashing President Trump claiming he’s on the side of “Corporate” America, she may be right about many members of Congress being in the pocket of “Corp America” but she’s wrong about DJT.
He’s definitely into building up America so that all Americans benefit.
I’m glad Bobby Kennedy is in position to make a good difference for all Americans when it comes to what we take into our bodies, especially what we allow our children to ingest.
We are surrounded by adds, for anything and everything, ignore, pay no attention, you know it’s a gimmick to get your money into the pocket of the product producer.
I LOVE This!!! Thank You, President Trump.
I am a retired RN who has worked in private medical offices for over 25 years, ( in OB/GYN and Retinal practices). I have long resented advertising for new drugs in the various media entities.
Don’t you think the medical professionals already know what new medications are available? They read their professional journals. They attend professional seminars. They consult with each other.
In each medical practice I worked in, we had frequent visits by drug reps from various pharmaceutical
companies.
They brought us lunch, left medication samples for our patients, held educational seminars.
And the prices of their drugs skyrocketed!
And the patients had high hopes that they would be cured by a commercial they saw on TV! Many of them requested the medication even if it was not appropriate for their particular diagnosis!
Don’t get me wrong. We need the science that produce life saving and life enhancing medications.
We just shouldn’t have to pay the extremely high prices for advertising the medications that we need for our quality of life. Have trust in your medical professionals. Not your TV.
I LOVED THIS ARTICLE, FINALLY TAKING THE ROSE COLORED GLASSES OFF WHEN IT COMES TO BIG PHARMA’S TV ADS; THAT MAKE A DRUG (SOME WITH DELETED *DEATH* MAY HAPPEN)
LOOK LIKE IT IS THE ANSWER TO ALL OF CONSUMERS PROBLEMS.
THE BEST PART IS THE OTHER COUNTRIES THAT DO NOT ALLOW TV ADS FOR PRESCRIPTIONS. YET, HERE WE ARE AGAIN LOOKING AT PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS THAT NOT ONLY ALLOW THEM BUT PROMOTE THE ADS WITH NO CAP AS TO THEIR DECEPTIONS. MAYBE THIS IS ANOTHER PART OF THE FAKE NEWS SCAM WITH 10 BILLION SPENT ON TV NETWORK PHARMACEUTICAL ADS IN AMERICA LAST YEAR!
IT IS ALL ABOUT GREED????
yeah, not too impressed, when everyone was campaigning, the message to the public wasn’t about getting the drug companies to disclose all the harmful, at the least, and at the worst death as side effects, but to actually STOP the bombardment of the ads themselves. As this article points out, it’s all about the money. What it doesn’t point out is that there are complicit partners with the drug companies. If the drug ad money wasn’t accepted by anyone, whomever anyone might be, then obviously the ads would go away. But since the moral compass is broken, well you get the point.
If this is factual, then why can Europeans pay about 10% of what we pay. Eliquis is about $600/month. In Europe it’s $5.00/month. He’s all talk!
As a Registered Nurse, I have always been bothered by the Big Pharma ads. I used to care for a man who would listen to the ads then tell himself he was suffering from whatever ailment those medications treated. I also have an issue with all the ads on television now that advertise for diseases I, as a nurse, had not even heard of. When I watch any television at all, I can’t help but notice how many ads are on for some sort of medication or supplement. It’s as bad as the cigarette commercials used to be. They need to be cut back. Thank you DJT and RK Jr for trying to make Big Pharma accountable. I’d like to know how many of the women popping massive doses of Tylenol on-line when pregnant end up with children with issues in development. I remember the warnings about taking Tylenol when I was pregnant 40+ years ago. All medications have risks when pregnant. They should all be used sparingly or not at all.
More regulations will also increase the cost of prescriptions and research for new products. A limit on lawsuits would help all healthcare costs in USA.