Daily Caller
RFK’s Calls To Ban One Of Big Pharma’s Most Powerful Tools Rattle Drugmakers Despite Uncertain Political Prospects
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Adam Pack
“The primary purpose of pharmaceutical advertising is not to influence consumers, but rather the television networks and news itself”
President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to helm the Department of Health and Human Services(HHS) is reportedly rattling drugmakers in light of Kennedy’s prior calls to ban pharmaceutical advertising.
If confirmed by the Senate to serve as HHS secretary, Kennedy could marshal the country’s public health agencies to implement his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) priorities, leading one pharmaceutical industry observer to claim that Kennedy is likely to attempt a ban on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising. However, any attempt from Kennedy to crack down on pharmaceutical advertising would almost certainly be challenged by drugmakers on First Amendment grounds and may lack the support of Trump and Republican lawmakers who have so far refrained from commenting on Kennedy’s proposal.
“One of the things I’m going to advise Donald Trump to do in order to correct the chronic disease epidemic is to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV,” Kennedy said to thunderous applause during a Tucker Carlson Live Tour event in Glendale, Arizona, on Oct. 31. “There’s only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical advertising on the airwaves. One of them is New Zealand and the other is us and we have the highest disease rate, and we buy more drugs and they’re more expensive than anywhere in the world.”
Spending on DTC pharmaceutical advertising in the United States ballooned to more than $7 billion in 2023, with ad buys on weight loss and diabetes drugs surpassing $1 billion for the first time, according to analysis from MediaRadar.
‘Threat To The Public Good’
“Whilst we have a relatively benign view of RFK’s impact on the Pharma industry, one thing that does worry us is the potential for the U.S. government to ban DTC advertising of drugs,” United Kingdom-based research firm Intron Health wrote in a report excerpted by FiercePharma, a pharmaceutical industry-focused news outlet. “We see this as the biggest imminent threat from RFK and the new Trump administration.”
Kennedy could wield considerable influence over the second Trump administration’s approach to pharmaceutical advertising since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — the chief regulator of the pharmaceutical industry’s advertisements — is housed within HHS.
The Biden FDA issued new guidelines on DTC advertising that went into effect on May 20, requiring advertising to state drugs’ side effects and medication risks in a “clear, conspicuous, and neutral manner.” Kennedy called for a review of these guidelines in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal published on Sept. 5.
During his run for president and as a Trump campaign surrogate, Kennedy claimed that media outlets who receive substantial ad revenue from pharmaceutical companies cannot report on Big Pharma with objectivity.
“The primary purpose of pharmaceutical advertising is not to influence consumers, but rather the television networks and news itself,” according to a statement on Kennedy’s website. “It gives Big Pharma the power to dictate what goes on the news — and what doesn’t — because the networks won’t bite the hand that feeds them.”
“Every other country in the world recognizes that pharma ads represent a threat to the public good,” Kennedy’s website also claims.
Kennedy’s concern that mainstream media has been co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry to buy news outlets’ silence on scrutinizing drugmakers in exchange for ad revenue has been embraced by influential voices in the MAHA movement and other Trump allies.
“The news ad spending from pharma is a public relations lobbying tactic, essentially to buy off the news,” Calley Means, a Kennedy advisor and MAHA advocate, told Tucker Carlson during an interview on Feb 2. “The news is not investigating pharma.”
“No advertising for pharma,” Elon Musk wrote on X on Nov. 19 in response to a post alleging a correlation between the growth of pharmaceutical advertising and rising media bias.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, has also argued that media organizations that rake in pharmaceutical advertising revenue should face increased scrutiny when reporting on public health matters. Bhattacharya was notably blacklisted by Twitter before Musk bought the platform over his criticism of the medical establishment’s lockdown approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Another argument against direct-to-consumer advertising by drug companies: Because of DTC ads, drug companies like Pfizer hold a vice grip on the editorial policies of conventional American media, which can ill afford to lose the advertising money,” Bhattacharya wrote on X on May 30, 2023.
Dr. Marty Mackary, Trump’s pick to lead the FDA, has not commented on Kennedy’s proposal nor allegations that the mainstream media has been corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry.
Ban Denies ‘Opportunity To Be Informed’
Although a ban on pharmaceutical advertising would put the U.S. more in line with the rest of the world, an attempted prohibition of the practice by the incoming Trump administration would likely infringe upon the First Amendment’s protection of “commercial speech,” according to Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a general surgeon and senior fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
“His calls to ban pharmaceutical advertising violate the First Amendment right to freely share and exchange information, including scientific information, and infringe on the individual right to self-medicate,” Singer wrote in a statement following Trump’s nomination of Kennedy to serve as HHS secretary.
Banning pharmaceutical advertising would also make Americans less informed about the availability of drugs and their side effects and widen the information gap between medical practitioners and patients, an apparent contradiction to Kennedy’s pledge to fight for Americans’ ability to question the medical establishment and do their own research, Singer told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
“On the one hand, RFK Jr. says — and I agree with him — that people need to be empowered. They need to do their own due diligence. We should be doing our own investigations,” Singer told the DCNF. “Well, how are you going to do that if you are barred from hearing what the pharmaceutical companies have to say about their medication, and its risks and benefits and side effects, which the FDA requires them to mention?”
“If you want an empowered population of adults to be able to do their own due diligence, you can’t block them from the information that a pharmaceutical [ad] is going to give them — especially when they’re [pharmaceutical companies] allowed to give it to healthcare practitioners,” Singer added. “Denying us the information actually denies us the opportunity to be informed.”
Uncertain Political Prospects
Kennedy’s call to ban pharmaceutical advertising is likely to face skepticism from Republican lawmakers who have traditionally preferred a deregulatory approach to the pharmaceutical industry. The current legislative effort to ban DTC pharmaceutical advertising in Congress has no support from Republican lawmakers.
“Sometimes when I hear his [Kennedy’s] agenda discussed, people are like ‘sounds great — he’s never going to do it’. There’s zero chance he’s going to be able to undo these conflicts of interests and the power of Big Ag and these Republican lawmakers who have a lot of big donors in these industries,” Megyn Kelly told Casey Means, during a Nov. 20 interview on her show about whether Kennedy’s MAHA priorities have enough support to be achieved during the next four years.
The pharmaceutical industry notably has roughly 1800 registered lobbyists in the United States, and industry PACs have doled out more than $15 million to candidates this year.
Trump tried to further regulate pharmaceutical advertising during his first administration by requiring DTC ads on television to include the list price for nearly all drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Three large drugmakers filed suit in response and a federal judge struck down the regulation before it went into effect, ruling that HHS overstepped its authority to compel drugmakers to include their list prices in advertising.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to the DCNF’s inquiry about whether the president-elect supports Kennedy’s advocacy to crack down on pharmaceutical advertising.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association that lobbies on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry, declined to comment on Kennedy’s calls to ban pharmaceutical advertising.
A Kennedy spokesperson did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
conflict
‘We Are In A Hot War With Russia’: Tucker Carlson Is Back In Moscow With A Terrifying Revelation
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson released a video on social media Tuesday from Moscow, revealing how the U.S. government has not only severed all communication ties with Russia but also prevented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from interviewing with Carlson and his team.
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated last month after President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied long-range missiles on Nov. 17 for strikes inside Russia. In a video posted to X, Carlson told viewers how U.S. involvement in the conflict has brought everyone closer to a nuclear confrontation since he last interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin in February.
“In that time, just a few weeks ago, the Biden administration, American military personnel launched missiles into mainland Russia and killed at least a dozen Russian soldiers. So we are, unbeknownst to most Americans, in a hot war with Russia, an undeclared war, a war you did not vote for and that most Americans don’t want, but it is ongoing,” Carlson said. “Because of that war, because of the fact that the U.S. military is killing Russians in Russia right now, we are closer to nuclear war than at any time in history, far closer than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Carlson went on to highlight how, despite believing that someone in Washington, D.C., was behind the push toward nuclear war, he had uncovered that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had cut off “all contact” between Russia and the United States.
“We felt there must be someone behind the scenes in Washington working to make sure that this conflict doesn’t become a nuclear holocaust. But we found out that no, in fact, there is nobody. Tony Blinken, the current secretary of state, cut off all contact between the U.S. and Russian governments. There is no back channel. There is no conversation. There hasn’t been for more than two years,” Carlson said.
WATCH:
“Meanwhile, most Americans have no access to any perspective other than that granted to them by NBC News and The New York Times. They don’t know how close we are. They don’t know the Russian perspective,” Carlson said. “We’ve been trying for over a year to get that perspective out to American news consumers.”
Carlson also noted that he had been attempting for over a year to interview Zelenskyy but had been “thwarted” by the U.S. government’s involvement.
“The American embassy in Kiev, which our tax dollars pay for, told the Zelenskyy government, ‘No, you may not do the interview.’ You can talk to CNN. You can’t talk to us. So we’ve been unable to speak to him,” Carlson said.
“So we came back to Moscow yesterday to interview the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, the longest serving foreign minister in the world … and ask him, where exactly are we? Are we headed toward an unprecedented conflict between Russia and the United States? Is there any way to peel Russia back from the east, from the sphere of China, back in to the west? Is that alliance permanent? Does the election of Donald Trump mean an end to this war, which is reshaping the world, the U.S. economy, the global economy and risking the life of every person on this planet? Is that possible? We just walked out of that interview,” Carlson added. “It’s absolutely fascinating.”
Talks of nuclear war surfaced after Biden authorized the use of U.S. long-range missiles for Ukraine, with Putin warning Ukraine about the potential use of new hypersonic missiles to target government or official buildings in Kyiv. Despite the signaling from Putin, U.S. intelligence sources allegedly told Reuters in late November that the decision to allow Ukraine the use of U.S. missiles has not increased the risk of nuclear war.
On Monday, Blinken headed back to Europe for what is likely his final high-level NATO meeting to discuss “priorities for transatlantic security, including supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, deepening cooperation with NATO’s southern partners in the Middle East, North Africa, and Sahel regions, and preparing for the upcoming summit at The Hague,” the Associated Press reported.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Bob Ehrlich
It is “lessons learned” season for the political class, but recent anecdotes reflect the left’s selective takeaways from the campaign and election of 2024.
— Former President Bill Clinton bemoans the advent of “zillions” of right-wing websites as a reason why the Harris-Walz ticket had such difficulties in reaching out to rural America.
— Donna Brazile insists (on Bill Maher’s show) that while the Democrats’ primary challenge remains poor communication, the voters still really do agree with the Party’s platform.
— Bernie Sanders (again) criticizes the out-of-touch “economic elites” presently in charge of the Democrat Party because…they are not progressive enough.
— The city council president in Erie, Pa., associates red-hatted supporters of President-elect Donald Trump with the KKK … and does not back down when confronted by the media and MAGA supporters.
— Actors Alec Baldwin and Sharon Stone deride American voters as “ignorant,” “uneducated” and “uninformed” at an Italian film festival.
These and similar storylines are illustrative but certainly not new. Indeed, I still remember following a Democratic member of Congress on one of the cable networks (in the aftermath of the 2016 election) wherein he lamented Hillary Clinton’s hemorrhaging of working-class voters — after which he assured the audience that his party would continue to protect sanctuary cities…
Some will write off these tin-ear reactions to post-election frustration or simple hardheadedness, but there is something more profound going on here. To wit, this generation of Democrats is far too captive to progressive ideology for them to conduct a detached, deep-dive postmortem on why so many people who work with their hands, do not subscribe to The New York Times and have never visited Martha’s Vineyard have become so turned off by woke values (some on the right diagnose it as a “mind virus”) and the progressive platform foisted on them these past four years.
Alas, there is another problem for the Democrats going forward that has far less to do with substance but far more to do with attitude. To wit: Flyover America has been paying attention and is now intimately familiar with the litany of “Let Them Eat Cake” Trump-era indictments that have spewed forth from members of the ruling class directed to the ways, means, tastes and preferences of middle America. (President Joe Biden’s “garbage” characterization of Trump voters and Mark Cuban’s weird but instructive charge that Trump lacks “strong, intelligent women” around him now joining Obama’s “bitter clingers” and Hillary’s “irredeemable deplorables” in the Democrats’ Hall of Shame.)
This mean but persistent and tone-deaf attempt to defame half the country may go over well in front of the appropriate crowd (Harris’ advising two pro-life protestors to leave her rally and go to the smaller Trump rally down the street comes to mind) but remains a major obstacle to any serious attempt to recapture Democrats’ support within working class America. Phrased another way, when so many people tell you what they really think of you over an extended period of time … you should probably believe them. And now — to the dismay of millions of self-righteous progressives — it appears church/synagogue/mosque attending, Walmart consuming, Second Amendment believing, woke rejecting, blue supporting America Firsters received the message loud and clear.
They voted accordingly.
Bob Ehrlich is a former governor of Maryland, member of Congress and state legislator. He is the author of five books on American politics and opinion pieces that have appeared in America’s leading newspapers and periodicals. He and his wife, Kendel, can be seen and heard on their weekly podcast, “Bottom Line with Bob & Kendel Ehrlich.”
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