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# Include all Media in Drug Promotion Regs: Professors
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/include-all-media-in-drug-promotion-regs-professors/
- Published: 2023-01-26T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T18:13:22.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5153633

Two professors with academic appointments in the schools of public health at Johns Hopkins and George Washington universities say loopholes in FDA regulations on prescription drug promotion “are exposing American consumers to false and misleading claims of drug ads via online businesses promoting potent drugs without accurate information about their risks and benefits.” Writing in a *Stat News* First Opinion [column](https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/26/drug-ads-dangerous-drug-advertising-loophole/?utm%5Fcampaign=rss&ref=fdaweb.com), **Thomas Moore** and **G. Caleb Alexander** say that when FDA first allowed direct-to-consumer advertising in the 1980s, the only significant business entities promoting prescription drugs were drug companies, and the primary outlets for drug ads were television, radio, and print media. “As a result,” they say, “advertising regulations for prescription drugs were focused on entities ‘that manufacture, distribute, or pack prescription drugs.’”

But today, they say, there are other kinds of businesses advertising or promoting prescription drugs. They refer to hundreds of clinics that offer ketamine infusions at doses that induce a hallucinogenic experience. And they cite a network of more than 50 centers advertising testosterone replacement therapy for men.

“There are good reasons for the extensive regulation of prescription drug advertising,” according to Moore and Alexander. “People with disorders that impair their quality of life or threaten death are vulnerable to false and misleading claims that appear to offer hope. Fueling such yearnings with exaggerated — or simply erroneous — claims of possible benefits also increases the likelihood of inappropriate or dangerous use.”

The professors say the U.S.’s now-obsolete system of regulating prescription drug promotion needs to be updated to deal with the many new avenues through which prescription drugs are advertised, prescribed, and dispensed. Current prescription drug advertising regulations and enforcement should apply to *all* business entities, they say, not just the companies that make drugs, that are advertising and providing people with prescription drugs. And FDA needs to provide clear guidance to emerging business entities that explains what is expected from drug ads on Web sites and social media that aims to recruit people to supply them with prescription drugs.

“Regulatory loopholes mean that millions of consumers are being persuaded to take potent prescription drugs based on exaggerated claims of benefits that may not exist and assurances of safety that are simply false,” Moore and Alexander conclude.