President-elect Donald Trump’s health secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has an ambitious plan to “Make America Healthy Again” — and his bombshell first target is Big Pharma’s advertising.
Kennedy said he’ll seek to ban pharmaceutical television ads, setting up a potential clash with an industry that spends over $5 billion annually on TV commercials.
Kennedy vowed to issue an executive order banning pharmaceutical advertising on television, a move supported by incoming FCC chairman Brendan Carr and Trump technology advisor Elon Musk, who posted simply “No advertising for pharma” on X.
“They’re not making us healthier,” Kennedy said of pharmaceutical products. “In a true free market, and if we were getting good information, we wouldn’t be taking so many of them.”
Research firm Intron Health called the potential ban “the biggest imminent threat from RFK and the new Trump administration,” and said pharmaceutical companies see massive 100 to 500% returns on TV advertising investments. Popular brand name drugs like AbbVie’s Skyrizi and Sanofi’s Dupixent could be particularly impacted.
The United States and New Zealand are currently the only Western nations allowing direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising.
The practice began in 1997 after FDA rule changes relaxed restrictions on television drug promotions.
Any ban would face significant hurdles, as previous attempts to restrict pharmaceutical advertising have been defeated on First Amendment grounds. The first Trump administration failed to require price disclosures in TV drug ads after court challenges.
The proposed ban threatens both Big Pharma revenues and television networks, where drug advertisements account for half of spending on major network news programs — and could lead to a major pushback by the media.
CNN spokesperson Emily Kuhn dismissed Kennedy’s claims about advertiser influence, stating “Advertisers play no role whatsoever in influencing our content or story selection.”