Only two industrialised countries let drug companies advertise prescription medicines to the public
The United States and New Zealand are the only two industrialised countries that allow prescription drug adverts aimed at the public. A 2006 debate in a medical journal set out both sides.
We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. how we score evidence
Caveat on this rating: A debate paper, not a study, and twenty years old. The legal position in either country may have changed since; the row dates the claim to 2006. Supporters of advertising point to real under-treatment of depression and to evidence that adverts prompt some appropriate care. Both positions are printed in the same paper, and this row gives both.
If you live in the United States, a drug advert on television feels normal. Almost nowhere else is it legal.
Significant findings
A 2006 paper in PLoS Medicine opens with the fact: "Only two industrialized countries, the United States and New Zealand, allow direct-to-consumer advertising" of prescription medicines. The paper is a debate. It prints the case for and the case against, side by side.
The case for: adverts tell people about treatments they did not know existed and can prompt care for conditions that go untreated, where stigma keeps people away. The authors who take this side also concede a weakness. Companies do not advertise the older generic medicines that are most underused.
The case against: the information in adverts is "often biased and misleading", and advertising raises prescribing costs "without net evidence of health benefits". One author concludes that the best option is to ban this advertising altogether, including adverts that promote awareness of a disease without naming a drug.
Both sides cite the same randomised trial of antidepressant requests, which is the next row in this set.
What this does not show
It does not settle whether the adverts do more good than harm. The paper is a structured disagreement between informed people, and it is from 2006. It shows that the United States is an outlier, and that the question is contested by people who have read the same evidence.
Worth asking
If an advert is the reason you know a drug's name, what did the advert leave out?
Source
What are the public health effects of direct-to-consumer drug advertising? — Almasi EA, Stafford RS, Kravitz RL, Mansfield PR (2006)
Read the source: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030145
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030145
How this was scored
- Study design
- not recorded
- Funding
- not recorded
- Published in
- not recorded
- Sample size
- not recorded
- Preregistered
- not recorded
- Conflicts disclosed
- not recorded
- Independent of proponent
- not recorded
- Retracted
- No
We have not finished checking this source, so there is no scoring to show yet. “We have not checked this yet” and “this is disputed” are different statements, so no scored band is shown rather than a low one.
Read the full scoring rubric, including what it can't tell you.
Published September 24, 2026.
Questions
How strong is the evidence behind this?
veisund rates this source "not yet assessed". We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. One caveat travels with that badge: A debate paper, not a study, and twenty years old. The legal position in either country may have changed since; the row dates the claim to 2006. Supporters of advertising point to real under-treatment of depression and to evidence that adverts prompt some appropriate care. Both positions are printed in the same paper, and this row gives both. The score is calculated from recorded facts about the source — study design, funding, publication venue, sample size, preregistration — not typed in by an editor.
What is the source for this?
What are the public health effects of direct-to-consumer drug advertising? — Almasi EA, Stafford RS, Kravitz RL, Mansfield PR (2006). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030145. The full source is linked on this page so you can read it yourself.
Is this medical advice?
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.