• Ad Age, Monday, April 16, 2007 10:15 AM

A congressional debate on direct-to-consumer drug advertising is set to start this week as ad and pharmaceutical lobbies step up efforts to defend the $4.5 billion business. Legislation introduced in one Senate committee would allow the Food and Drug Administration to ban DTC ads for the first two years a drug is on the market, while requiring additional warnings and the statement that a drug has just recently been approved and all risks may not be known.

Ad groups, afraid the FDA would just ban ads for all new drugs, argue that would hurt consumers, while violating the First Amendment. "It is the most serious threat to advertising that I've seen in a decade," says Jim Davidson, a lobbyist for advertising groups. "The principle here is what powers should be given to a federal agency to scrutinize and block commercial speech."

Under the previous Republican-controlled Congress, the pharmaceutical industry pretty much had its way on every issue of importance to it, thanks to generous political donations to the GOP.

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