What does this say about Big Pharmas ability to foist drugs on the public with fancy ads?
The creation of pharmaceutical markets is not always a simple, top-down process. In the 1950s, people learned about tranquilizers not from the direct-to-consumer ads we have now—in fact, such ads were illegal for prescription drugs—but from friends, neighbors, relatives, doctors, television shows and Hollywood tabloids. Indeed, Miltown got heaps of free and unexpected publicity from Hollywood celebrities, who talked openly and enthusiastically about their casual use of the drug. Milton Berle, Mr. Television himself, took so much that he joked on his hit show that he was thinking about calling himself “Miltown” Berle. Why has the market for anti-anxiety drugs like Miltown cooled since its peak in the 1970s? Social conservatives effectively tied widespread tranquilizer use to the burgeoning war against recreational drugs, and critics charged that Miltown and Valium had left Americans emotionally numb and politically impotent. It didn’t help that housewives had become the drug’s most loya
