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RFK’s Calls To Ban One Of Big Pharma’s Most Powerful Tools Rattle Drugmakers Despite Uncertain Political Prospects

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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.

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Musk Completely Derails UK Political Establishment, Accuses PM’s Party Of Covering Up Muslim Rape Gangs

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Thomas English

Elon Musk ignited a political firestorm in Britain after accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer of complicity in the “rape of Britain” Friday, reanimating a years-old debate over organized child sexual exploitation by predominately Pakistani men.

Musk has ravaged Starmer and other U.K. officials in a barrage of tweets over the past week, primarily accusing Starmer of inadequately prosecuting rape gangs during his tenure as director of public prosecutions (DPP) from 2008 to 2013. The SpaceX founder also attacked Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, who he said “deserves to be in prison,” for blocking a government-led inquiry into child sexual exploitation by gangs in Oldham, a northern England town.

“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years,” Musk wrote. “Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”

 

The recent flurry of attacks mark the world’s richest man’s latest incursion into international political affairs, with Musk now focusing in particular on the United Kingdom’s decades-long struggle to curb the proliferation of “grooming gangs” primarily comprised of Pakistani-descended men who mainly target native Briton girls for sexual exploitation, The Telegraph reported in an analysis of the persistent issue.

The most infamous cases involving these gangs occurred in northern England towns like Oldham, Telford and Rotherham — the severity of which has been whitewashed for fear of accusations of Islamophobia, according to The Telegraph.

“To protect ‘community relations’, the British state has gone to immense lengths to cover it up,” he wrote. “Reports have been blocked and deliberately kept out of the public eye. Any connection with ethnicity, immigration, or Islam was downplayed … the evidence that British Pakistani men were over-represented among the perpetrators was spiked to avoid uncomfortable truths.”

Musk Starmer and the Labour government with operating a two-tiered justice system, suggesting in a meme Thursday that the prime minister prosecutes “rape and violent crime” with leniency while instead focusing on policing online speech. He also said the Labour Party “opposes a national inquiry on the mass rape of little girls in Britain for one reason only: It will show that they were complicit.”

 

The prime minister defended his prosecutorial record as DPP in a press conference Monday, saying he “brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang in this particular case” and “changed the whole prosecution approach.” While largely avoiding mentioning Musk by name, Starmer also condemned the spread of what he called “lies and misinformation” from detractors who are “interested in themselves” rather than the victims.

Starmer also defended Phillips in the press conference, insisting she has done “a thousand times more than they’ve even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career.” Phillips blocked a Tory-led motion Thursday to hold a public inquiry into the historic sexual abuse in Oldham because it was for “Oldham council alone” to decide whether one was necessary, according to The Telegraph.

Musk’s attacks are not limited to the Labour Party alone, however. The Tesla CEO also called for Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit and the leader of the Reform Party, to be replaced as party leader because he “doesn’t have what it takes.”

 

The comments come hours after Farage referred to Musk as a “friend” in an interview with the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” program.

“Well, this is a surprise!” Farage wrote in response to Musk. “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I will never sell out my principles.”

 

The rift between Farage and Musk seems to stem from Farage’s longstanding attempt to distance his political movement from Tommy Robinson, a longtime British anti-immigration activist currently imprisoned for contempt of court after “repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee,” according to the BBC.
Musk has repeatedly called for Robinson’s release and characterized his imprisonment as politically motivated, while Farage cited UKIP’s “obsess[ion] with Islam and Tommy Robinson” in a letter published in The Telegraph announcing his departure from the party in 2018 after 25 years.
Musk has also recently commented on political affairs in Germany, writing that “AfD is the only hope” for the country on Dec. 21, 2024.
The United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office told the Daily Caller News Foundation it had “nothing further to add to the PM’s words earlier today.”
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Trump Calls Biden’s Drilling Ban ‘Worst Abuse Of Power I’ve Ever Seen’

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Kish characterized Biden’s move as “a petulant act of a Hard Left Establishment out to punish 340 million Americans who rejected their calls to bow to their Climate Religion and its vows of poverty.”

The Biden White House said early Monday that outgoing President Joe Biden has ordered huge swaths  of U.S. federal waters off-limits to future leasing and drilling for oil and natural gas. The ban includes  the entire offshore Atlantic, offshore Pacific, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Northern Bering Sea.

All told, the regions impacted by the ban encompass 625 million acres, an area bigger than the states of Texas and Alaska combined. It is also significantly larger in scope than the Louisiana Purchase, which spanned 530 million acres.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “It is not worth the risks.”

Ironically, the Biden ban includes the Atlantic areas where his administration has spent billions of dollars subsidizing the construction of massive industrial wind power facilities. Those developments are currently the source of rising concerns related to impacts on sea mammals, seabirds and the once-thriving commercial fishing industry. All are concerns the administration has refused to adequately address in any real way.

Dan Kish, senior fellow at the D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research think tank, pointed to the “irony of his proposed windfarms in the same waters he is closing to American oil and gas is they are not going to be built. The electricity they produce is so expensive it is deindustrializing Europe and beginning to topple governments. The only question is whether the governments or the windmills will topple first.”

Kish characterized Biden’s move as “a petulant act of a Hard Left Establishment out to punish 340 million Americans who rejected their calls to bow to their Climate Religion and its vows of poverty.” Kish added that Biden and his White House “couldn’t care less about the national security implications, as witnessed by their feckless record that has lit fires around the world while they try to extinguish our gas stoves at home.”

In an interview with Salem Radio national talk show host Hugh Hewitt Monday, incoming President Donald Trump said he would reverse Biden’s order on his first day in office.

“I see that it has just come across that Biden has banned oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory,” Trump began, adding: “It’s ridiculous. I’ll un-ban it immediately. I have the right to un-ban it immediately.”

Trump acknowledge that the same climate-alarm groups behind the Biden ban will challenge any attempt to rescind it in court, saying, “They’ll do everything they can to make it as difficult as possible. They talk about a transition — they always say they want to have a smooth transition from party to party. Well, they’re making it really difficult. They’re throwing everything they can in the way.”

Trump concluded by telling Hewitt that Biden’s order amounts to “the worst abuse of power I’ve ever seen.”

The White House invoked the drilling ban under Section 12 of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). It is a section of that law that previous presidents — including Barack Obama and Trump himself — have used to authorize similar drilling bans.

A reading of that provision makes it clear that Congress intended it to be used solely for reasons of national security and during national emergencies. Unfortunately, for the prospects of a Trump reversal, the law does not include any provision for revoking such bans.

Previous presidential bans have never been challenged all the way up through the Supreme Court, though a challenge by the Trump Justice Department to Obama’s ban in 2017 resulted in the set-aside being upheld by an Obama-appointed district judge in 2019. Trump’s Department of Justice chose not to challenge the decision.

This is clearly a political power move by the Biden White House, another payoff to the Democratic Party’s big climate-alarm funders. Whether Trump and his appointees can come up with an effective strategy to challenge it remains to be seen, but if Trump’s comments to Hewitt are any indication, the incoming president is fully prepared to take on the fight.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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