Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Angus King (I., Maine) introduced a bill Thursday that would ban pharmaceutical manufacturers from using direct-to-consumer advertising, including social media, to promote their products.

I've never understood what people have against direct to consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals. Sitting through their commercials does get tiresome, but that's more a statement about ads than the companies using them.

There are definitely cases where pharma advertising can be helpful to the consumer. I can count multiple times where my Dr. failed to inform me about a medication that I had learned about from other channels such as advertising.

Plus, with pharma companies required by the FDA to list even the rarest of side effects in their infomercials, the deck is already a bit stacked against them. I know multiple people who've heard the scary side effects for a drug (which is every drug in existence basically) and refuse to even consider it, even when those side effects in actuality only affect 1 in 1 million people or less.

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