Pharmacist practicing in the USA; raised elsewhere.

It's a disgrace and it's stupid. They spend those billions on advertising because it creates a culture. The stereotypical American healthcare culture.

They run them to make people think about their health, to question their health and to encourage the people into believing that any and all medical conditions can and should be treated through pharmaceuticals.

Now this is largely true. Drugs in America aren't respected like they should be. You have a chain pharmacy with a drive-thru window and you equate the system to a fast-food joint. Fifty years ago everything was medical. If you had a problem, your answer was one of a few dozen major drugs or some kind of surgery.

Now any condition you have, it's a prescription. The public hasn't come to respect or recognize that. And having commercials on TV doesn't help. It doesn't make people understand the severity of their disease, or the value that's in treatment. It's just a lovely montage of happy, smiling and multiracial groups of people taking a pill and moving on with their lives.

What are the most common chronic disease states in America? Hypertension. Dyslipidemia. Diabetes.

What are the practice guidelines? Typically a 3-month trial with a lifestyle change, but because physicians know that most aren't going to lose weight, stop smoking and eating healthier; they medicate from the start.

Same goes for ADHD, most psychiatric problems, pain and mild infections. It's medicate, medicate, medicate. Where do people get this expectation from? The TV (among other places).

I strongly believe that direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals has heavily contributed to this American-perspective to healthcare that any new condition "just means another pill in the morning". It's another factor in the growing "instant gratification" culture that's pretty well entrenched and this "I'm okay and special" idea that people don't need to change how they live their life to be healthy, they can just take a pill.