A break from my usual marketing thoughts for a random thought has been roaming my brain for quite awhile…

Should advertising for prescription medicine be banned?ss

If you are one of those people who sit through the TV commercials and have seen the growing onslaught of ads for medicines that are only available by prescription you’ve probably noticed what I’ve noticed.

The amount of time devoted to warnings and precautions due to side effects far exceed the time spent telling us why we would want to take these drugs.

Most of these medicines come with warnings that you might die.

If you don’t die, then you are going to be crippled.

If you are not crippled, you are going to be miserable.

If you are not miserable, then you will have some restrictions and precautions to be aware of, but at least you are now taking these drugs to help something.

Being in the advertising world, I don’t like being told that certain things can’t be advertised.

But I also don’t believe anyone ought to push stuff on us that has so many deadly and life threatening warnings.

Without going too far deep into this rabbit hole, the cost of these drug ads is not cheap.  It is paid for by the sale of the drugs, which increases the price of these drugs and, well it’s a viscous cycle.

Even if these ads were banned in traditional media, there’s the unregulated other media out there, social media, and the like.

So, I doubt that we’ll see an end to these Rx ads, but it would be nice, right?

And while I’m making my wish list, I wish the Charmin Bears would just go away.

And whoever is telling me to “Enjoy the Go”… leave me alone too.

One last request.  All political ads must tell the whole truth.

Time to pinch myself, wake up and face another Monday.

As soon as I find my unicorn…