RFK Jr. Plans Crackdown on Pharma Ads in Threat to $10 Billion Market

Rachel Cohrs Zhang

Tue, Jun 17, 2025, 9:12 AM 5 min read

(Bloomberg) — The Trump administration is discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients, in a move that could disrupt more than $10 billion in annual ad spending.

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Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to deduct direct-to-consumer advertising as a business expense for tax purposes, these people said.

The discussions are ongoing and plans could still change before the agency undertakes any action, they said.

Limiting pharma ads would be a major win for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He’s long wanted to more strictly regulate how medicines are promoted. He’s said he believes Americans consume more drugs than people in other countries because of the US drug companies’ ability to directly advertise to consumers.

The new policies could threaten a key source of revenue to advertising and media companies, as well as the US pharmaceutical industry. Companies spent $10.8 billion in 2024 on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in total, according to a report from the advertising data firm MediaRadar.

AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) and Pfizer Inc. (PFE) were particularly big spenders. AbbVie alone spent $2 billion on direct-to-consumer drug ads last year, primarily on advertising for the company’s anti-inflammatory drugs Skyrizi and Rinvoq. The medicines brought in more than $5 billion for AbbVie in the first quarter of 2025.

“We are exploring ways to restore more rigorous oversight and improve the quality of information presented to American consumers,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a written statement, adding that no final decisions have been made.