Direct-to-Docs Opioid Marketing
This chapter addresses the pharmaceutical industry’s direct-to-physician marketing of opioids, a factor that has fueled the current addiction epidemic. A 2019 study sought to understand the relationship between mortality from opioid overdose and the pharmaceutical industry’s direct marketing of opioids to physicians. The study analyzed the association between three factors in every US county: the amount of marketing payments pharmaceutical companies made to physicians, opioid prescribing rates, and the number of overdose deaths. Researchers found that direct marketing of opioids to physicians was associated with increased opioid prescribing rates and increased overdose mortality 1 year after marketing engagements. As such, the national response to the opioid epidemic has focused in part on reducing the number of opioids prescribed by physicians. Additionally, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act promotes financial transparency between pharmaceutical companies and health care providers. By increasing regulation around pharmaceutical direct-to-physician marketing, and by making reports of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians available to the public, states have the potential to reduce overdose mortality.