The Impact of Increased Drug Advertising on Patients, Consumers
Expert in drug markets, Luke Turnock, PhD, joined Drug Topics to assess where he thinks recent trends in drug advertising will lead patients in the near-to-long-term future.
While advertisements for prescription drugs have noticeably increased on television, overall promotion of prescription drugs has increased exponentially on social media channels. Amid influencers and brand ambassadors getting paid to promote products, on top of manufacturers promoting their own medications, researchers are skeptical about where these trends will lead the health of consumers that are commonly seeing these ads.
Luke Turnock, PhD, is a senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln and has done extensive research into prescription drug markets. He recently caught up with us to discuss the internet and social media culture and where drug promotion has landed amid ongoing discussions on various websites.
“There's a very good chance it leads to a normalization of notions, essentially, that you have to be enhanced to be able to keep up in the culture,” Turnock told Drug Topics. “We've seen it with various things; the rates of sexual enhancer use doubled over a 4-year period in the 2010s. Rates of testosterone replacement therapy massively grew in the 2000s, and then again in the late 2010s.”
With these trends leading to the population’s normalization of certain drugs, several public health issues could arise. Whether it be increased off-label use of these products or a decrease in access due to increased demand, Turnock helped us understand how advertising can impact consumers in the near or long-term future.
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