In the U.S., companies can advertise prescription drugs, but there are a lot of requirements, most notably the requirement of reading the list of side effects, however long and embarrassing. They can be kind of gross and scary, but I actually like hearing those lists. It’s refreshing for ads to have to present both sides of the story, and it’s amusing to think how much money was spent to tell you about all the humiliating shortcomings of their pill. But most of all, it reassures me about the structures of society. We often think of government as being a puppet of big business, but if a multi-billion-dollar pharma conglomerate still has to warn you that their product may cause 'anal leakage,' then it’s clear that regulations still have some teeth.
(Fun fact: The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow the advertising of prescription drugs.)
In contrast, here in Canada, we have pretty severe restrictions on these ads. You can advertise prescription drugs, but you can’t mention what the drug does. And I have to say, these ads are even worse than the fast talker trying to sneak anal leakage past us.
For one thing, if you can’t tell anyone what the drug does, there’s not much else you can do except repeat the name of the drug over and over, in an aggravating and blatant exercise in name recognition. In their defence, the advertisers do try to make a joke of it. And in their offence, even that is really annoying.
It’s the most insultingly cynical that advertising can get. I mean, advertising can, theoretically be a good thing: a business is making the case of how beneficial their product is. That’s how it should be, and — I assume — how it once was, when advertising first crawled out of the primordial goop. But we all know most ads are not really very useful; it’s mostly just psychological tricks, trying to associate the product with a catchy jingle, or sex, or a promise of restoring confidence in your masculinity. We know all this, but we tell ourselves advertising can be a good and useful thing to justify to ourselves that this is all acceptable.
But these prescription ads puncture that pretence, because they’re the purest form of anti-intellectual advertising. You can’t pretend they’re a useful service to the public, because they tell you literally nothing other than the product name. These ads are actually dumber than showing half-naked women in a beer ad; that ad is at least making the (ridiculous) case that the beer will make you attract women. Prescription ads don't even do that. There's no hiding the fact that it's pure repetition aimed straight at lodging the brand in your lizard brain.
And I have no idea how this regulation makes sense. As I said, it’s good to have some limitations on the advertising of prescription medication, but in this case it’s not helping. They’re telling us what is available, but not telling us anything else. Even the American ads warning us about anal leakage are at least giving the public some info. (And don’t worry, by the comic rule of three, I won’t bring that up again.)
It should also be noted that there is another kind of ad allowed in Canada, which is essentially the opposite. In this case you’re allowed to talk about the medical problem, and even tell people that there are one or more solutions available, you just can’t tell anyone what it is. So essentially it sounds like a non-profit public service announcement, except for the note at the end to talk to your doctor about prescription medications, hint-hint, nudge-nudge. For some reason, these kind of ads are mainly used to tell us about toenail fungus cures. Apparently there’s a lot of money in that: It's at the top of the list of things I can't believe are sold so hard, ahead of home-delivered mattresses and reverse mortgages.
Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re hugely curious about what some of these commonly-advertised drugs are for, but you never actually look it up, because that would feel like you’re giving in, and you can’t let these ads win. Well, I figured I’ll take that on so you don’t have to. I looked up the drugs being advertised in name only in Canada right now: Ozempic, Rybelsus, Saxenda and Contrave. The answer is, they're all for weight management and diabetes. There are differences in how they're administered, and what specifically they're used for, but they're all after a similar market. I guess I should have guessed that, since these ads are among the few with actors of a variety of body types, a Sherlockian hint that came dangerously close to giving us real information.
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