Erectile Dysfunction

Television ads for prescription drugs, which were all but outlawed as recently as four years ago, are now taking over your TV set.

To wit: Pharmaceutical companies spent an estimated $1.7 billion on TV advertising in 2000, 50 percent more than what they spent in 1999, more than double the 1998 amount.

In 1991, only one brand of prescription medication was marketed on network television by the route the industry calls "direct to consumer," or DTC.

By the end of 1997, there were 12 drugs on that list, and by 2000, there were at least 50.

The rush to the airwaves was triggered by the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration, which, until four years ago, had required that manufacturers include nearly all of the consumer warning label in any pitch - something possible in a magazine advertisement, but prohibitive in a 30-second television spot.

The sole exceptions were for so-called reminder and help-seeking ads - ones that named either the product or the condition being treated, but not both.

The result was some very confusing ads.

For the better part of a decade, advertising agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and the major television networks lobbied for less restrictive rules, and, in August 1997, the fda issued a "clarification" of its 30-year-old regulations.

Television commercials may now name both the product and the disease, as long as viewers are given information about "major" risks of the dru...

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