Senators Press FDA to Act on Social Media Drugs Ads

With the extensive use of social media among Americans — and teens in particular — senators from both parties are pushing the Food and Drug Administration to update its guidelines on prescription drug marketing on social media.

In a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf on Wednesday, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Mike Braun, R-Ind., criticized the FDA for not updating its guidance on prescription drug promotion on social media in close to a decade, writing, "There are gaping holes in the FDA's oversight of DTC [direct-to-consumer] promotions that are being exploited on social media at the expense of children and patients."

Social media personalities with no medical or pharmaceutical background use their platforms to promote prescription drugs, the senators noted. They also pointed out that the rise of telehealth companies has seen many Americans seek out advice and prescriptions via their phones.

The senators' letter gave an example in which patients asked their doctors to prescribe a drug solely based on its social media praise. "A Bloomberg Law report highlighted troubling examples of patients asking their doctor to prescribe Ozempic after seeing 'good reviews' on TikTok, with representations of 'women ... losing weight, feeling great, and eating less without severe side effects.' However, they quickly experienced vomiting, sickness, bleeding, and lingering pain — side effects that they believe were not adequately acknowledged in the social media promotions they saw," the letter detailed. 

An investigation by the FDA and Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy in 2021 revealed that teenagers with chronic health problems are more likely to be persuaded by pharmaceutical advertising via social media personalities. 

"One meeting participant noted that in her review of FDA compliance letters, one of the key concerns evident to her was that drug sponsors have been using social media platforms like YouTube to promote products that are not approved, framing the products as 'breakthrough' drugs, despite a lack of scientific evidence. The researcher further noted that this violative practice could have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable individuals with chronic or hard-to-treat conditions," the report concluded. 

The senators included a list of a dozen questions related to its prescription-drug advertising policies. They requested that the FDA address the questions by March 27.

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