Drug promotion : what we know, what we have yet to learn

Overview

It is increasingly important to understand the effects that drug promotion has on prescribing and the use of medication given the growing amounts of money companies are devoting to this activity. In 2002, almost US$21 billion was spent on promotion in the USA, including over US$2.6 billion on direct‐to‐consumer advertising (DCTA) . These amounts are at least 30 times what national governments spend on drug information (for example, in Italy: US$4475/doctor by the pharmaceutical industry versus US$180/doctor by the government)ii. In Canada in 2000 there were over 3.4 million visits by sales representatives to doctors, leaving behind 21.5 million drug samples and in the USA companies organized over 300 000 events for doctors. Sales representatives are frequently the only source of information about medicines in developing countries where there may be as many as one representative for every five doctors.