Mainstream news networks are in full panic mode as Congress prepares to vote on a bill that would ban Big Pharma from advertising directly to consumers. Media executives are warning that without pharmaceutical ad revenue, their networks may not survive.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Angus King (I-MA) introduced a bill Thursday to ban pharmaceutical manufacturers from using direct-to-consumer advertising, including social media, to promote their products. 

The bill would prohibit any promotional communications targeting consumers, including through television, radio, print, digital platforms and social media. It will apply to all prescription drug advertisements. 

“The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television,” Sanders said in a statement. “They want us to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and ban these bogus ads.”

The bill comes after repeated calls from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to end prescription drug advertising.

Kennedy said while running for president that he would issue an executive order kicking pharmaceutical commercials off television, arguing that Americans take too many prescription medicines and suggesting that the industry’s spending was influencing news coverage of the drug industry.

“We’re one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers,” Kennedy said in a video he posted on X last year, referring to the U.S. and New Zealand. “Everybody agrees it’s a bad idea.”

Sanders and King each voted against Kennedy’s confirmation, but are critics of prescription drug ads. King in February introduced a bill to prohibit pharmaceutical advertising to consumers in the first three years after a medicine’s approval, following other efforts in past years.

Others in Congress have also moved to rein in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in May proposed a bill that would eliminate the ability to deduct consumer drug advertising on companies’ taxes as a business expense.

Drug advertising aimed at consumers has boomed since the Food and Drug Administration relaxed its policies in 1997.

That allowed pharmaceutical companies to make health claims in TV commercials while disclosing only a drug’s “most important” health risks. They previously had to disclose much more extensive lists of possible side effects, or else avoid identifying the purpose of the drug in the first place. 

Industry observers have been skeptical that the Trump administration could successfully evict pharmaceutical advertising from TV, predicting that any such effort would wind up challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group, has previously responded to questions about Kennedy’s proposed ban by pointing to its “guiding principles” for direct-to-consumer advertising. 

The guidelines say direct consumer communications, and TV ads in particular, serve public health by increasing disease awareness, educating consumers about treatment options and motivating people to speak with doctors.

Drugmakers, meanwhile, often rely on consumer advertising to attract consumers with a narrative around a treatment and the types of people it can help.

A ban on consumer drug ads would also lay down an additional speed bump for an advertising industry already nervous about the effects of President Trump’s tariffs.

Prescription drug advertising makes up a major portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on advertising in the U.S. each year. Among the largest spenders, Abbvie spent about $377 million to promote the anti-inflammatory drug Skyrizi with traditional TV ads last year in the U.S. and Novo Nordisk spent about $263 million promoting its weight-loss treatment Wegovy, according to TV ad-tracking firm iSpot. 

Prescription drug brands accounted for 24.4% of ad minutes across evening news programs on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC this year through May, according to data from iSpot.

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