From: judy bachman xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 3:33 AM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Fw: FDA Seeking Public Comment on RX advertising -commercial
speech

RE" RX Advertising Comments:

I was a clinical providers who is now on disability. Over the years I have
been constantly flowered with lunches, free drugs, trips and educational
programs in nice places. I was bothered by the excesses and frequently
declined such gifts.  This lavish practice and advertising to the public
simply makes drugs more expensive.  Now as a disabled person, I spend five
hundred a month on drugs, including Vioxx and Prozac.  I have ended up in a
medical bandruptcy and live in assisted housing.  My story is typical to
most of my neighbors except their careers were not in medicine.  Restrict
advertising to the public, and restrict what drug companies spend to market
their drugs.  These practice are unethical business.

FACTS ABOUT PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY:
Already spending a lot...
- Drug companies spent $2.5 billion in 2000 on direct-to-
consumer advertising, a 150% increase from 1997, when
the FDA relaxed rules.
- The same year, they spent $4 billion marketing drugs
to doctors.
And seeing prices of heavily advertised drugs going up...
- Less than 1% of all available drugs accounted for
50.7% of the increase in consumer spending on drugs -
not coincidentally, those are the most heavily
advertised drugs.
- In 2000, one of the most aggressively marketed drugs,
Vioxx, had a higher advertising budget than either
Budweiser or Pepsi.
- Heavily marketed drugs such as OxyContin and Accutane
saw price increases at five times the rate of inflation.
As a result, drug companies are making a killing...
- The pharmaceutical industry ranks as the top sector of
the US economy. Fortune Magazine ranked drug companies
#1 in virtually every category in every growth-related
economic category in 2001 - the same was true for
several years before that.
- Consumer spending on prescription drugs in the US has
nearly quadrupled in the last 11 years, from $40 billion
in 1990, to $154 billion in 2001, according to the
National
Institute for Health Management.
But they're going too far...
- Drug companies are being sued across the country for
misleading and fraudulent advertising.
And lying about where the money's really going...
- Across the drug industry, officials maintain a great
deal of money goes into research and development, yet a
recent study from Public Citizen found they exaggerated
the cost-per-drug “research and development” costs by as
much as 200%.

I do not believe the pharmaceutical industry needs any
weakening of advertising laws, as they already found
ways to spend over $2.5 billion in direct-to-consumer
marketing in 2000, in addition to $4 billion they spent
on marketing to doctors (not including an additional $8
billion in prescription freebies). As a result of these
heavy ad campaigns, the pharmaceutical industry was the
best performing sector of the US economy the last
several years, according to Fortune Magazine, including
a lead in every measurable growth area in 2001. Their
profits were driven largely by enormous returns on
aggressively marketed pharmaceuticals - with 34 of these
high profile drugs making up more than 50% of the
industry's skyrocketing profits. In addition to selling
to more and more consumers, drug companies are jacking
up their prices at well over the rate of inflation –
Allegra’s gone up 11%, OxyContin up 15%, and Accutane up
nearly 23%.

The pharmaceutical industry is preying on its most
vulnerable citizens: the sick, infirm, and aging, in its
quest for profits. The Food and Drug Administration
should maintain and improve its role as the watchdog for
what Americans consume in the name of health, rather
than assist in drug company profiteering. The FDA should
not cave into the pharmaceutical industry as was done in
1997, when relaxed rules on drug advertising initiated
this steady rise in drug costs. Instead, the FDA should
concentrate on looking out for the needs of its citizens
and assisting federal officials in finding ways to keep
costs down, not helping them rise further out of
control.

Judith Bachman Ph.D., P.A.
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