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Pharma Marketing Faces a Character-Count Conundrum
this_boat_is_real writes "There's growing concern over how pharmaceutical companies use social media and the Internet to market their products. Last November, the US Food and Drug Administration held a hearing on the topic, and many were worried over how marketing mediums such as Twitter — which has a 140-character limit on text — can sufficiently disclose drug risks." Here's the FDA's announcement about last year's hearings, which includes links to an archive of presentations as well as a video record of the meeting.
What the drug companies should do is to add a disclaimer such as: -
"Though these drugs may work as advertised, their use is not intended for use by residents of the USA. Such residents who wish to employ these drugs should ensure that their employment does not go against laws in their jurisdictions."
All the cool kids today are using URL shorteners. They make it impossible to see where a link is going, make the link's function depend on two 3rd parties rather than just one, and probably provide lots of sneaky analytics data; but they allow you to embed URLs in your tweets, so clearly it's worth it.
.ug TLD. All we have to do is obtain dr.ug and set up a URL shortening service specifically for linking to giant lists of scary sounding side effects from pharma shill tweets. What could be more logical?(Besides, y'know, not fucking direct marketing Prescription Drugs...)
Anyway, the fine nation of Uganda has the
My dealer uses twiiter.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
As if character count is the real worry with how Big Pharma markets their wares? Talk about misdirection and misframing....
Yo dawg.Come check out this new medication for Lupus. It's off the chain.You'll be fucking up with fat bitches in no time!Btw it causes horr
I'm in favor of full disclosure of significant risks, but I think it's a bit ridiculous that a side effect with 0.1% occurrence needs to be listed in every advertisement. If you're getting a prescription medication, you should be talking to a doctor. The doctor should be able to warn you of significant side effects, and those lovely information sheets can tell you about the rest. Is this much information REALLY necessary?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Why would anyone use a social media platform that artificially limits your entries to 140 chars? This is a technical limitation that would seem to limit the utility of the service.
Why would they create a blogging site and deliberately degrade it in this way?
And why limit it by chars? Wouldn't limiting by number of words (provided each word is no longer than say 30 chars) be a better way to keep posts simple without introducing a situation where users use awkward abbreviations to shorten their entries?
A service that limits the length of entries by number of words (and say one URL per entry) instead of by number of chars would seem to me to be the best way to enforce brevity. Isn't the point of brevity to reduce the time spent reading information? The typical Twitter entry with awkward abbreviations would seem to cancel out this advantage.
"Buy __MIRACLEDRUG__ to cure __DREADDISEASE___. See your doctor before using. May be fatal."
There, as long as __MIRACLEDRUG__ and __DREADDISEASE__ aren't too long I think we've met the 140-character limit and mentioned the worst possible side-effect. Can we archive this discussion now?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So they think a 30-second commercial is long enough to disclose drug risks? Or anything else than a many-page highly technical report that assumes the reader knows all the implications of the implications? And when the risks are often not even well-known in the first place?
I think I'll send a letter to my congresswoman asking for a bill requiring all text ads be at least 141 characters in length.
The cake is a pie
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Tard. dysk.; fever; shaking/sweating/confus./incr. pulse/bloodpress (NMS)
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occas. fatal; [mini]strokes 4 psychotic old ppl.; suic. risk; coma; death
Yay!
Quit allowing the advertisement of prescription drugs. The reason that prescription drugs are, well, by prescription, is that they may carry significant risks, and careful evaluation by a professional is required as to whether a patient should take them.
If a patient needs a prescription, let their doctor be the one who gives them their options, based on a full discussion of the risks and benefits of each possible one, and let the patient be the one to decide based on this information. And while we're at it, let's disallow the pharma companies from ever knowing how often a given doctor prescribes their stuff, so that they can't give any type of reward or kickback (they would still, of course, know how often they're prescribed in aggregate).
Medical decisions should be made based upon a detailed discussion with a professional, not a glossy brochure.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
But we can't let a bureaucrat get between patients and their health care needs! Not even if that bureaucrat is a doctor!
There are only 2 countries which allow "direct to consumer" advertising of prescription drugs - the US and New Zealand, and I'm not 100% about NZ (been a while since I looked). That should tell you something right there.
Sometimes I wonder if the glossy brochure and a few free pens & notepads is all the professional is working off as well.
more 420 would mean less 140 :)
The spelling and grammar police can kiss my ass
In a 140 character twitter message, you can do a bit of unintelligible abbreviation, but even then, 140 characters isn't enough to include the disclaimer ITSELF.
True, but let me see what I can fit into 120 characters, the length of a Slashdot signature:
Have trouble keeping your pecker up? Ask your MD about VIAGRA. (It's not for everyone. For safety info see VIAGRA.com.)
Mod twitter [...] overrated!
I think Twitter is overrated too, but the article takes Twitter's message length limitation as a postulate. It also mentions the similar length limitation in Google text ads.
How about quit allowing drug manufacturers to release drugs with no more than 2 side effects?
What ever happened to "Do no harm"?
The problem isn't fitting the contraindications into a tweet, its having too many contraindications.
If you ban all drug ads, then how do you educate the public that a particular syndrome is treatable?
that's a very good point. before i visited the states i'd never seen an ad on tv for prescription drugs. i can't see how it helps anyone other then the drug company, and their well being doesn't trump the publics.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
By telling all the doctors that some drug exists, who will then tell the people when they go to see them about the new giant growth in their neck.
See?
There's more info in 144 characters than you'll get from the tv commercials.
I think you meant "...to release drugs with more than 2 side effects?" The no there kind of changes it and I'm sure that the pharma companies would gladly oblige.
In reality though, MOST things will have more than a few side effects, that is why they are prescription drugs...if they were completely safe they would be OTC. As far as that goes, even most OTC drugs have more than a few potential side effects they are just more rare and less damaging. If Bristol Myers Squibb proposed Tylenol as a new drug it would almost certainly NOT be given clearance by the modern FDA, it's therapeutic window is just too small, especially in people with liver issues which they might not even know they have.
"Tell your doctor? Tell your doctor?.. Shouldn’t my doctor be telling me?.. When you tell your doctor, isn’t he just a dealer at that point?" -- Bill Maher
wanna bet the law gets changed ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Sometimes I wonder if the glossy brochure and a few free pens & notepads is all the professional is working off as well.
That and the Powerpoint slides from their gratis "training" seminar in the Caribbean.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
how do you educate the public that a particular syndrome is treatable?
By telling all the doctors that some drug exists, who will then tell the people when they go to see them about the new giant growth in their neck.
Unless the people all think that, for example, "the new giant growth in their neck" is a normal part of aging. For example, a patient might be afraid to go see a doctor about sexual dysfunctions for fear of wasting the doctor's time and the patient's money for a visit.
How about quit allowing drug manufacturers to release drugs with no more than 2 side effects?
Because we all have different DNA, so one person will have side effects, where another person does not. All drugs have some side effects, even natural ones. Some people react badly to caffeine for example.
However, very little work is done to match your DNA profile to side effects of any given drug. Most clinical studies only track your "race" European, African, Asian etc which is a poor indicator of genetic differences. Hopefully as the cost of DNA mapping is get significantly cheaper there will be a batter mapping of your genetics Vs side effects so a Doctor can administer drugs which match your generic profile.
Quit allowing the advertisement of prescription drugs.
Not going to happen, check out the Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
It's pretty clear. And personally I don't favor amending it just so some easily manipulable people can stop getting upset when their doctors don't prescribe them the random medicine they saw on TV. Learn not to be manipulated by advertising, it's an important life skill. Don't make the rest of us suffer just because a small group who can't handle it. By your logic we ought to ban a lot of things because a small minority can't handle them.
Qxe4
Sounds to me like with the exception of the (possibly) the last bullet point those kind of ads should be banned. They play into people's fears and constant need to "enhance" themselves. These companies are just hoping to make us all hypochondriacs and it seems to be working sadly. The ins and outs of various diseases and medicines should be left to the expert, the doctor, not some half-brained twit who rots their brain watching hours and hours of pharma ads.
Tell your doctor? Tell your doctor?.. Shouldn’t my doctor be telling me?
Medical records aren't yet completely synchronized between health care providers. Part of this is that electronic medical records are relatively new; the other part is HIPAA. Besides, how will your doctor know what side effects you've been feeling if you don't tell your doctor about them?
cialis may b rite 4 u 2day! side fx r: ur ass may leak, <3 atk, u cant sleep. call ur dr if u hav erection 4 more than 4 hrs
"If you ban all drug ads, then how do you educate the public that a particular syndrome is treatable"
Shouldn't the patient be discussing their symptoms to the doctor? I do a review of systems with all of my patients. Unless there is something new, anything that is bothering a patient I should already know about.
is quite a bit worse than fatal. It could take a week or two to kill you, and make you feel great during that time, while turning you into a disease carrier fatal to everyone around you while you're still alive.
end of story.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The right to free speech is not unlimited. Since it is commercial speech, any law abridging the speech needs to pass intermediate scrutiny - i.e. the law must further an important government interest in a way that is substantially related to that interest. So if the law bans the interest (protecting the health of citizens is important) without going too far (the narrower the better), it would fly.
The real issue is getting the law passed. As far as Congress justifying the law, the commerce clause would easily serve Congress. But special interests could hold it back.
End prohibition..... Re-Legalize cannabis.... educate the public on the proper medicinal use of cannabis.
The pharma companies will lose money naturally. Who wants to take a pill that kills you slowly when you can use cannabis without side effects.
(Gotta use it properly though and that takes information that's not mainstream.)
Search for "Granny Storm Crow" and start reading.
Would that also include banning the radio PSA reminding women to take folic acid during pregnancy (or when planning to become pregnant) to reduce the rate of birth defects? How about the ones urging teens not to commit suicide? Though not exactly drugs in the traditional sense, they do pertain to health and probably constitute a fifth class, but they may share some overlap with the other types of ads mentioned.
I also fail to see the issue with the first category of add. A lot of over-the-counter drugs are relatively harmless and are about as similar as different brands of shampoo. If three different cough medicine companies want to advertise their brand, that's entirely their business. Not all types of medicine are something that requires the expert opinion of a doctor. Sometimes common sense or a basic understanding of disease and medicine is enough to treat something like a common cough.
I share your sentiments regarding the effects of a lot of this advertisement, but not your solution. As tepples pointed out, advertisement can serve as a form of education for the public. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
You need a prescription, right? So that means you've seen a doctor and a pharmacist if you're taking it, and it was the responsibility of one or both of them to explain all of the risks to you. Too damn bad if you're taking prescription meds without a prescription, you deserve what you get.
The disclaimer is effectively inherent in any legally prescribed medication.
It is indeed pretty clear. Those rights were granted to human beings, not multi-national conglomerates. Corporations don't, and weren't supposed to, have the same rights as human beings. Free speech is not unlimited - when your "speech" is detrimental to the well being of the vast majority of citizens, then it is no longer protected by the Constitution. Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre comes to mind...
Also, it has happened plenty of times before; remember Joe Camel?
Furthermore, it's not just some "small group" who can't handle not being manipulated by advertising - it's pretty much the extreme majority. They've spent the last 60 years studying our brains just so that we *can't* ignore their marketing efforts - and they're pretty damned good at it.
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Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
The disclosure laws are there for a reason. If you can't satisfy their requirements in a tweet then you can't advertise pharmaceuticals on Twitter. If you can't satisfy them in a Google ad then you can't advertise pharmaceuticals in a Google ad.
This isn't affecting any one company over another or anything like that. It's just following the laws to their conclusion -- and, really, going right along with their intention. Putting a drug in your body is of much greater consequence than what company you buy your mass-produced junk from, and these laws make sure drug companies can't just do snappy, feel-good 10-second spots with no substance whatsoever like beer companies and cola companies.
A big part of advertising is repeating a brand name over and over. There's an impression made by hearing a brand name in association with positive images or text, even if you aren't very involved with the ad. The disclosure laws try to prevent companies from just spamming you with impressions and making sure there is substantial information right up front. If it's behind a link, as many of these companies propose, that's all lost. The casual eye skips over, gets the positive impression and none of the disclosure.
So... within our current framework if there's no room to disclose right up front there should be no ad at all. Maybe the disclosure laws suck, maybe the fact that drugs are advertised at all sucks... those are separate points. As the law stands now, no Twitter ads for Viagra. Yay!
Already happens, see alcohol and tobacco advertising restrictions. Previous SCOTUS rulings oked them. The current SCOTUS may not, but we may get lucky and have Scalia or Thomas die.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
After reading this (and other comments in a similar vein) I can see more clearly what is wrong with commercialised healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry in the USA. For all us non-Americans out in the real world, the title of that patriotic song "God Save America" might be changed to "God Save Us From America".
... I am regularly amazed by the sheer number of pharma ads on television. Depending on the time of day I can see anywhere between 50 to 100% of the ads on TV being about pharma products.
I'd worry about getting those ones down before I worried about the Internet ones.
I believe everyone here is talking about prescription drugs, not vitamins or OTC meds.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
After reading this (and other comments in a similar vein) I can see more clearly what is wrong with commercialised healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry in the USA.
Sure you can. I simply don't see the problem with phantonfive's post. The First Amendment really is one of the things that the US has going for it. I don't favor screwing that up just to hypothetically protect some dumb people.
There are only 2 countries which allow "direct to consumer" advertising of prescription drugs - the US and New Zealand, and I'm not 100% about NZ (been a while since I looked). That should tell you something right there.
Canada has some limited drug ads.
Medical decisions should be made based upon a detailed discussion with a professional, not a glossy brochure.
Sometimes I wonder if the glossy brochure and a few free pens & notepads is all the professional is working off as well.
Ha. The dirty secret of the drug business is when you bring your prescription to the pharmacy & have it filled, the pharmacist immediately sells the prescription to a data broker. Not to build a profile of the patient, but to build a profile of the doctor. Then they sell this info to drug sales reps.
So Dr. Smith, we notice that you prescribe a lot of drug A, which is for medical condition B. We think our drug, drug X, is much better, and here's some scientific literature that might help you make a decision. And if you start prescribing more of drug X than drug A, we'll hire you as a consultant, or send you to a nice medical conference in Hawaii...
The drug business does develop new drugs, and they do help people. But they are very scummy in other ways.
FIne lets take "human rights" away from corporations thou.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
haha fail so bad.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You can quite easily run an ad saying "Do you have a giant neck growth? Help may be available for you, consult your doctor!" without advocating a specific treatment.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
That's certainly what I meant, at least. If a drug is safe enough to let people buy it off a grocery store shelf without consulting a doctor, we're talking about a different story. Folic acid, shampoo, and cough medicine are not generally prescription drugs, nor are suicide help hotlines.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
it's like you've got no grip on what happens in the real world.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Side effects are often haphazard - some guy may have reported having more headaches during clinical trials, but the true cause was his kids drums or listening to his iPod too much. Someone may have had a heart attack during trials but that was due to chance or perhaps too high a cholesterol. Drug testing is as scientific as we can make it, but is nowhere near the chemistry lab experiments we did in high school for being truly controlled. The systems involved and the myriad possible interactions are just too hard to test completely, so any reported side effects (possibly higher than a certain threshold) have to be reported. How many software incompatibilities have we seen over the years where software package x and driver y don't get along? The same thing happens for drugs, especially when the elderly who have the weakest (on average) immune systems are the ones coping with the most interactions.
Free speech is never absolute, and certainly never in a commercial setting. For example, your doctor cannot go post your medical records on a public website. That's free speech, but HIPAA bans it, and I think you'd find arguing that a doctor should be exempt from HIPAA on free speech grounds not to meet the reception you'd expect in court.
In advertising specifically, tobacco and alcohol ads are already restricted. Indeed, a mandate of disclosures (and a requirement that advertising be true) are all allowable restrictions.
And I say this as someone who will ardently defend the freedom of speech, even down to things one finds disgusting or shocking or distasteful. But speech when you're trying to sell something is different altogether. Speech when you're selling something that could have significant risks, ten times so. No constitutional amendment is required here.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I think you missed my point. I wasn't referring to OTC products.
Also listing symptoms will make some people think they have them.
It's not the count of the characters, but the content of their character that is the problem with big pharma.
If you ban all drug ads, then how do you educate the public that a particular syndrome is treatable?
I thought the way it worked was that a patient develops some sort of disorder or symptoms that causes him to seek out a doctor who can make the actual diagnoses and determine the best course of treatment. Why would a patient necessarily need to know about new treatment options if they have a competent doctor that they see regularly? Shouldn't the doctor be the one to decide if a new treatment is right?
The argument is that drug advertising often causes people to seek out unnecessary, expensive treatments, sometimes for conditions which they don't really have. Why do people to it? We probably all want to fix ourselves in some way, and what would be better than a magic pill or ointment? That's how snake oil salesmen got their start and the drug companies appear all to aware of this, churning out shiny new patented drugs that in only a few years are determined to be ineffective or worse.
Sick people in US (and only in US) are afraid to see doctors because they expect treatment to be unaffordable, ineffective or both. As a result, pharmaceutical companies believe, they NEED ads hawking their drugs, so after seeing the ad few thousand times a person will finally drag his ass to a hospital and annoy a doctor into prescribing something. Then hopefully that person won't throw a prescription into trash after learning how much it will cost.
This is what happens when pharmaceutical price gouging and insurance companies' machinations reach their logical conclusion -- no one can afford anything. I see the next bailout coming in a few years to them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Why would a patient necessarily need to know about new treatment options if they have a competent doctor that they see regularly?
In the United States, a lot of people see an MD as needed instead of regularly. This can happen because of lack or limitations of health insurance or just because a set of symptoms appear between regular visits.
As a disclaimer for twitter, I recommend appending "U may die." to the end of every ad. At least it's more adult-sounding than "Ur so ded."
Coffee is my drug of choice.
Doesn't have this limit. ;)
If you ban all drug ads, then how do you educate the public that a particular syndrome is treatable?
Don't they tell these things to their doctor?
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Seeing a doctor isn't free. The help seeking ad tells the public that a particular set of complaints is something that would be worth a patient's time and money to tell about to a doctor.
Interesting ... didn't know NZ allowed it too.
My home is Australia but I've spent a decent amount of time in both the US (several years) and NZ (4 or 5 months). I don't remember seeing a single prescription drug ad in NZ, but in the US geez, there's one every ad break. I think there must be some serious limitations on the NZ version of the law allowing it ... either that or a cultural difference that just doesn't make it as worthwhile for the pharma companies.
As a condition of access to your health records doctors are prohibited from disclosing them. This has nothing to do with free speech. Restrictions against fraudulent advertising also have nothing to do with free speech. (Temperance laws against alcohol and cigarette advertising are certainly in violation, no matter how much they try to justify it as protecting the children, but all sorts of rights are thrown out in name of virtuousness.) Whether something is being sold is irrelevant, because every instance of speech can be interpreted as selling something, just like every advertisement can be seen as transmitting educational information.
While I find any type of advertising revolting, in itself advertising is clearly protected as free speech, and the majority of the citizens want it that way as evidenced by their willingness to pay to view advertisements.
...until they both get their act together and allow for messages >160 characters. This is absolutely the most ridiculous restriction in the 21st century I have ever seen. 1120 bits per message? Seriously? It's like we're living in the 80s with 300 baud modems on our mobiles or something...so ridiculous! And the cost is even more outrageous. In the U.S. most companies charge 20 cents per message... That's $1497 per MiB! WTF is wrong with this picture?
Google Buzz has vastly improved upon the Twitter concept, allowing attachments of images, links, etc. with no character limit. I really hope twitter will soon die the miserable death it deserves...
Not to actually support direct-to-consumer advertising, which I don't like, but: doctors are often unaware of available treatments and even diagnoses. And, of course, if they had the knowledge that you expect them to have, direct-to-consumer advertising wouldn't be a problem. A patient would ask for something, and they'd firmly tell them either 1) It's too dangerous and not effective, 2) There is this better/cheaper treatment available, or 3) That is exactly what I was going to prescribe anyway.
It's the fact that doctors don't know (and generally know they don't know) about the latest and haven't/can't review the primary literature that patients coming in with requests get humored. They've never heard of "restless leg syndrome," but a patient with intense leg pain wasn't able to sleep through the night just with aspirin, they'll give the new drug a shot.
There are none - our benevolent pharma company overloards tells us so.
marketing keeps corporations alive, no matter what the are in business of doing.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Anyone who buys drugs, or more importantly, has selected a physician who can be convinced to prescribe said drugs, on the basis of what the drug company put up on a social networking site deserve's to be removed from the gene pool.
If your kids are watching TV (let alone the advertisements), then you are part of the problem.
Yeah, right.
The plural of "medium" is "media." There is no word "mediums." Sorry.
FIne lets take "human rights" away from corporations thou.
Corporations are organizations composed of humans and owned by humans. We take away "human rights" from corporations, we're taking them away from those humans.
That argument makes no sense. They have the human rights that everyone has. Why should they get extra human rights?
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
And I say this as someone who will ardently defend the freedom of speech, even down to things one finds disgusting or shocking or distasteful. But speech when you're trying to sell something is different altogether. Speech when you're selling something that could have significant risks, ten times so. No constitutional amendment is required here.
Your bar for "ardently defend the freedom of speech" is really fucking low. This thread is a good example of how pro-censorship, pro (medical)patent, and pro state-licensing the slashdot crowd is. Freedom to tinker? Information wants to be free. "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle..."? "fuck that TJ shit" the /crowd says!
That argument makes no sense. They have the human rights that everyone has. Why should they get extra human rights?
They don't get extra rights. You just say that they do.
So if I own a business, I get my human rights, and I get to exercise the human rights of my corporation. That means I have VASTLY more rights then I normally would. Now lets say I'm an Arab oil shiek, and I own a company in the US. I now have the right to funnel all of my money to change the policy in the US. You want that? Honestly? If thats your position, then obviously you have issues, and I question your ability to comprehend what the repercussions of giving human rights to corporations are. They do call them human rights for a reason anyways.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I don't think prescription medicines can be advertised in New Zealand. At least I don't see ads for them on TV. It really amazed me to see all the pharmaceutical ads when I was in the US.
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Ah, a smug foreigner. You're the only thing more common on slashdot than *nix discussions.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, buddy, but your country's shit stinks, too.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Wrong. We don't allow prescription drug advertising (except for unsubsidised non-special authority ones, such as Losec for heartburn, and the two ED medications).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
many were worried over how marketing mediums such as Twitter — which has a 140-character limit on text — can sufficiently disclose drug risks."
Let's see...
You were saying?
Plus, I'm sure people aren't using stand-alone twitter messages to actually sell the products. They probably include links to web pages, which don't have size limits. Worrying about Twitter size limits and ability to not include lengthy warnings is like that Teletype manager-type guy who picked capital letters instead of lower-case letters because you can't spell 'God' right with only lower-case letters. Societal norms are bound to collide with technology when the technical limitations are seen oh good heavens I need coffee I started rambling again.
Well thats just it, I had a doctor who had *a lot* of swag from a particular drug which she pushed very hard. Indeed I trusted her on it and it was a miserable experience.
So if I own a business, I get my human rights, and I get to exercise the human rights of my corporation. That means I have VASTLY more rights then I normally would.
No, it doesn't. First, you are merely exercising your human rights. Second, suppose my first assertion were incorrect. Even in that case, anyone can create and use a corporation, enjoying whatever rights there might be. So there's no restriction of rights or special rights reserved for certain people.
EASY solution. Make it illegal to market prescription medication to consumers. Patients should not be going to their doctors asking for drugs. Doctors should be making diagnoses, and prescribing the appropriate drug for the patient's condition. It's dishonest and dangerous.
One never knows when one might need a rotten tomato... - King's Quest IV: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow