The following letter-to-the-editor was written by ATRA president Tiger Joyce and appeared in the August 6, 2025 print edition of the Washington Post in response to their July 28 editorial entitled “Those annoying pharmaceutical ads have real value.”
It is worth noting that prescription drug ads are carefully regulated by the Food and Drug Administration — unlike lawsuit ads targeting pharmaceutical products. The FDA requires drug ads to “present a ‘fair balance’ of information” about both risks and benefits. If an ad overstates benefits, plays down risks, or makes unsubstantiated claims, the FDA will tell the manufacturer to take down or correct the ad or face consequences. And a viewer can’t run to the drugstore and buy a prescription drug. He or she must speak with a doctor about it first.
Contrast that with the often-misleading lawsuit ads targeting prescription drugs. These ads typically focus solely on risks with little or no acknowledgment of the product’s overall benefits or that a side effect might be extremely rare. Those advertisements use scare tactics, often instructing viewers to “call right now” if they or their loved ones have taken a certain prescription drug, and suggest that they might develop a horrific injury. The goal of these ads is simple: Generate as many “leads” as possible, flood the courts with speculative claims, and use the threat of an occasional “nuclear verdict” to pressure the drug manufacturer to settle. Those lawsuit ads put public health at risk by leading viewers to stop taking their prescribed medication without speaking with their doctor to seek a beneficial, safe treatment.
A small but growing number of states has clamped down on some of the most blatant deceptive practices, such as presenting lawsuit ads as “medical alerts,” but there is little federal oversight. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims banning direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads will protect the public. However, he should shift his focus to condemning the lawsuit industry and call for oversight of misleading pharmaceutical litigation ads by TV lawyers and lead generators.
