Prescription drugs should not be advertised directly to consumers. These advertisements pressure the viewers to use their medication while it may not be in the best interest of the consumer. The manufacturers also state that their prescription drugs are better than any non-prescripted medicines. However, there are over the counter drugs that cost less yet cure the same symptoms. That is why prescription drugs should not be advertised directly to the consumers.
Advertisements urge the viewers to use their medication even though it may not be necessary. Metformin advertisers claim that they have created “the drug that everyone should take.” Metformin is for people with type 2 diabetes and is used to reduce the chance of getting breast cancer. However, the way they put it, that everyone needs to be taking Metformin, makes it sound like even if you don’t have type 2 diabetes, you should still be using it. Another example is in the reviews for Mirtazapine, when they state that there are no possible reasons why taking the prescripted drug would cause any major side-effects, persuading viewers to feel that the drug is safe for them to take any time they have pain. Nevertheless, it does list that Mirtazapine may cause weight gain, so if each pill after the first five you took gave you one pound and you took a pill once a week for a year, you would have gained 47 pounds. That is a lot of weight to put on in a year just from taking one pill a week, to me that would be a major side-effect that people would need to know before willingly taking this prescripted drug. My final example, Hydrocodone, is a prescripted drug that is described as a typical painkiller, so people feel that if they are in pain that taking it is no big deal. Some of the very common side-effects include daily nausea and hard stool. These are just some examples of the myriad of prescription drug advertisements that prompt the viewer to feel that they should take the drug ...