...what a great salesperson!

It seems like every commercial on TV is for a prescription drug. And yet consumers can't buy them without a doctor's approval. So why target consumers with these ads? Here's how the U.S. became one of the only countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies peddle drugs to ordinary people.

FDA loopholes...

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. Most countries banned the practice in the 1940s. The direct-to-consumer market was pioneered not in a corporate boardroom, but by Joe Davis, a regular salesman who sold packaged goods.  At the time, pharmaceutical companies marketed only to physicians through print mailings, visits, and free samples, with the patient knowing little about the drugs they were taking. The physician told them what to take, and they followed directions.

Davis went to his friend, an executive at the medical advertising company Medicus in the mid-1980s. The advertising problem was that the FDA required any drug ad to include a full list of possible side-effects, which often took several pages of tiny print....hard to do that in a TV spot.

So the two devised a way to recommend drugs in ads that did not mention the name of the medication, but only the positive effects of a hypothetical drug with the exact attributes of a specific pharmaceutical. Commercials ended with instructions for the consumer to 'see their doctor' for more information. By omitting the name of the drug, the two were able to slide their ads through a loophole in FDA regulations.

The unnamed drug they marketed was Seldane, which they tagged as an "antihistamine that did not cause drowsiness." When patients asked doctors for this exact type of drug, they got Seldane. Over the next few years, Seldane went from sales of $34 million a year in 1985, to $800 million per year. (Seldane, interestingly, was removed from the U.S. market in 1997 after it was found that the drug could cause heart arrhythmias.)

Advertising to consumers puts physicians under a new kind of pressure. If they want to keep you as a patient, and if giving a prescription for a drug that you asked for keeps you happy, they might do it.

Pharmaceutical commercials often have a strangeness as well, dominated by cartoons, unusual scenes, 'blankets with eyes,' and just about anything that can be done to convey a general sense of wellness and direct you to your physician.

The Nielsen Company determined that there are, on average, 80 drug commercials every hour of every day on television. Say it ain't so Joe.....

...the "Green Thing"

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right about not having the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day. (p.s. it also didn't matter too much if your older sibling was the same sex or not...)

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right.

We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

Remember: Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

-Dr . Sherif K. Mazhar, Ph.D.