From: Joan B Lee [joanblee@juno.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 5:26 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Public Comment on RX advertising




Dear Sirs:

As Legislative Liaison for Gray Panthers California, I am

writing to offer my comments to the US Food and Drug 

Administration with regard to the FDA's authority over 

"commercial speech" as it relates to the manipulation of the 

consumer by pharmaceutical companies through advertisement of

prescription drugs.  


I can personally speak to the disgust I feel when
   
watching ads for Claratin, Allegra and other allergy 

medications, Hollywood-style, which attempt to brainwash

those of us in the suffering public that these drugs are the end-

all/be-all for our suffering. The resulting push by desperate 

patients for their doctors to prescribe these drugs has been a 

big factor in driving up the cost of healthcare. Indeed, the huge 

media push for Allegra as a seeming cure for allergies has made 

it the number one prescription for that ailment with an 

accompanying inflated rate of 11%.  The law of supply and demand 

would dictate that companies could lower the price and still 

realize necessary profit.  Instead, through what many would 

consider fraudulant and inaccurate advertising, they have 

convinced the American Public to buy into their marketting plan. 


The pharmaceutical industry needs strong tightening up of 

advertising laws, to bring some ethical accountability to the 

over $2.5 billion in direct-to-consumer marketing in 2000, the $4 

billion spent on marketing to doctors, and the some $8 billion in 

prescription "samples" and giveaways,all of which has resulted in 

some $154 billion spent for their products in 2001 alone.

    
Surely it should give some pause for reflection that in this 

time of struggling national growth and wobbling stock

market confidence, the pharmaceutical industry is essentially 

unaffected, standing at the very top of the Fortune 500.  The 

industry has taken the lead in every measure of growth   

in the year 2001.  Not that we would begrudge corporations

success, but there is much room to question tactics and 

methods and whether they have exceeded the legal boundaries by 

fantastic claims in advertising, then driving up prices for those 

drugs, which result in obsese profits. 

The senior population is targetted by  The pharmaceutical 

industry in much the same way that tobacco companies were found 

to be targetting young people and women.  The result is that  

persons who are sick, infirm and aging desperately seek solutions 

to their health problems.  The FDA has been charged with 

the oversight of products which Americans use and should be more 

vigilant that price manipulation and advertising scams are not 

effectively destroying our American healthcare system.



Gray Panthers California asks that  the Food and Drug 

Administration be a more active watchdog for the American public, 

study the true effect of the relaxed rules on drug advertising 

which have resulted in unaffordable drug costs. The FDA should

concentrate on looking out for the needs of its citizens

and assisting federal officials in finding ways to keep

costs down, not helping them rise further out of control.

Joan B. Lee
   Legislaive Liaison
   Gray Panthers California


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