Copyright Santa Clarita Valley Signal
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Ignoring his slow-motion destruction of the Department of Health and Human Services, we can still give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. his tiny due: He’s promoted two things everyone can applaud — cleaning up America’s food supply and cutting out the mind-numbing, manipulative pharmaceutical advertising that floods our lives. We’ve all suffered through it — ads more painful than the diseases they claim to treat. During this year’s MLB season, I could barely enjoy a Dodgers game without being emotionally waterboarded by commercials featuring brave, trembling souls with Alzheimer’s. There they are — hugging loved ones, talking about early intervention, whispering, “It may be Alzheimer’s.” Each commercial carefully crafted to surgically implant doubt: “Wait, do I forget names sometimes?” Cue the fear. Cue the test. Cue the expensive, dubious drug. Cue the billing to Medicare. It’s brilliant marketing — and a total invasion of private peace. Forget Alzheimer’s for a moment, so to speak. You, me, and the fencepost are hammered daily with warnings that we might have Parkinson’s, depression, obesity, sleeplessness, erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure, skin disorders, or cancer risk. Watching sports has become an endurance test all its own: nine innings of baseball, three hours of football, and any of 75 drug ads diagnosing our demise. And always the manipulative refrain: “Ask your doctor if blah blah (with the funny name) is right for you.” After nine innings of this treatment, what I really need is an anti-vomit pill. You know the offenders: AbbVie for psoriasis and arthritis. Sanofi for eczema and asthma. Wegovy for obesity. Rexulti for depression and agitation. Tremfya for arthritis and immunology. And of course, the endless erectile-dysfunction spots — especially during “manly” programming like NASCAR or NFL football. (Honey, clear the kids out — that Cialis commercial is back!) We hate it — the intrusion, the repetition, the forever monotony. Yet the ads keep coming. Why? Because they work. They scare the hell out of us and drive us off our sofas into doctors’ offices. And doctors, primed by drug reps, rarely say no to their patients. The system, to quote Donald Trump, is truly “rigged” — a slickly engineered dependency loop: advertisement → fear → doctor visit → prescription → profit → more ads. The profits are colossal. The American pharmaceutical industry pulls in about $700 billion a year, representing half of all drug sales on the planet. That’s 50% of global pharmaceutical business concentrated in one country with only 4.1% of the world’s population — yet Americans die younger and live less healthy than most advanced nations. If this doesn’t infuriate you, you may be suffering from outrage-immunity syndrome. We don’t just have a drug problem — we have a drug-advertising addiction. And get this: Only two countries in the world allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads — the United States and New Zealand. Not Europe. Not Russia, China, Australia, Japan, or even North Korea. We’re the worldwide outlier that thinks it’s healthy to bombard citizens with medical fearmongering between Doritos and Coors Light commercials. Only New Zealand is as drugged-up. Americans have become easy marks for a manipulative, profit-driven industry that thrives on anxiety. So the ads keep coming: “Ask your doctor,” they repeatedly purr, “if this miracle drug that may cause liver failure, blindness, or sudden death is right for you.” Enter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — former heroin addict and famous anti-vaxxer. An unlikely crusader against one of the world’s most powerful industries. But … Since taking over at Health and Human Services, Kennedy has proposed or supported regulatory changes to make it harder and costlier for drug companies to flood our screens, including: • Requiring longer, more detailed disclosures of side effects. • Removing or limiting the tax deduction for pharma ad spending. • Backing the End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act, which would ban consumer-facing ads across all media. Yes, the First Amendment’s “money equals speech” doctrine will complicate things — one of the Supreme Court’s cruelest jokes on democracy. Still, through regulation and tax tweaks, Kennedy might finally make these incessant ads too expensive to carpet-bomb our airwaves. And wouldn’t that be something? Imagine watching a baseball game without being told you’re on deck for dementia. Imagine a Sunday free of whispered warnings about your liver function or your limp … something. Imagine your doctor — not a Madison Avenue hotshot — deciding what treatment you need. If Donald Trump really wants to “Make America Healthy Again,” he could give us all a gift that would keep on giving: Pick up that gold Sharpie and sign Kennedy’s initiative. Do this, and all America might thank both Trump and Kennedy for a rare bipartisan act of sanity: Better health through doctor’s guidance — not gauzy emotional vignettes overlaid with fear and endless side effects. Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
