Washington (H24N). Prescription drug sales have escalated in recent years fueled by drug companies’ increased spending on advertising – particularly on television, according to a recent study by the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation (NIHCM).

Pharmaceutical companies spent $1.8 billion in 1999 on mass media campaigns that market their drugs directly to consumers. That figure is up 38.5 percent from the $1.3 billion the industry spent on direct-to-consumer advertising in 1998, and 33 times the $55 million spent on mass media ads in 1991.

Television ads made up most of the mass media bill, with companies spending $1.1 billion to get the word out about their products to viewers.

Consumers apparently got their message loud and clear. Sales for the cholesterol drug Lipitor, for example, marketed by Warner-Lambert/Pfizer rose almost 56 percent in 1999 to $2.6 billion. Warner-Lambert/Pfizer spent $55.4 million to mass market Lipitor to consumers in 1999, up from $7.8 million spent on advertising in 1998.

"A cause-and-effect relationship between direct-to-consumer ads and the rise in drug prescriptions and pharmaceutical spending has not been firmly established," wrote the study’s authors. "But many observers infer it and the circumstantial evidence is strong."

In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defined the rules governing such advertising, which opened the floodgates for pharmaceutical companies to mass market their drugs. The FDA made it easier for companies to launch ads in print, on radio and on television.

Today, prescription drug spending is the fastest growing health care expense, according to the study. In 1998, retail drug stores dispensed about 2.6 billion prescriptions, up from 2.1 billion in 1994.

"Numerous observers have raised concerns about whether mass media ads are inappropriately inducing demand for some new prescription medicines," wrote the study’s authors. "They worry that people are beginning to ask their doctors for newer and costlier medicines when less expensive drugs may work just as well. Proponents of direct-to-consumer advertising argue that the ads have added enormously to the information consumers are getting about prevalent health conditions and diseases that are widely undertreated in the United States such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and depression."

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