People hate drug ads on TV. Here’s the 4 issues they complain about most

In the United States, pharmaceutical advertising seems inescapable.

Since the first prescription drug ad ran in the early 1980s, the business of pharmaceutical advertising has exploded. Drug companies spent $7 billion on advertising last year, according to Statista, with most of that going to television ads; more than $287 million was spent on TV advertising for Sanofi and Regeneron’s anti-inflammatory drug Dupixent alone.

Yet most people would rather not see these ads at all. In a 2016 STAT-Harvard T.H. Chan poll, more than half of the people surveyed — 57%, to be precise — wanted drug ads to be taken off the air.

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