I thought this might be a pretty good post to have by itself because it would carry different comments compared to the other thread, but the reason that so many drug ads are on US television compared to anything else is because the US and New Zealand are the only countries that don't outright ban direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. This ban was lifted under Bill Clinton's FDA in 1997 under the caveat that the ads list all the side effects, but of course they didn't realize how much they'd advertise.
Advertising directly to doctors was never banned, which is how Purdue Pharma, run by the Sackler family, members of the Triple Parentheses Gang, were able to outright lie to doctors about how OxyContin was non-addictive, resulting in its over-prescription and the current opioid epidemic.
https://jheor.org/post/2674-with-tv-drug-ads-what-you-see-is-not-necessarily-what-you-get
I’m basically the same the past few years. I believe in free market, but that requires regulation by the people. To put it like that one video, “but the people are retarded.”
Not enough people have a policy of not rewarding bad behavior. I don’t really use drugs enough to care, but I totally might have a personal policy that I don’t buy drugs that I see constant advertising for. If I did I’d stick to it. I don’t want to reward that.
More realistically what I do have. I do not buy cosmetic items or video game currency. At all. I don’t recall having ever done it. I’m sure there’s some crazy exception where I bought a bundle of things and it happened to throw in some cosmetic item but was a better deal. Obviously I’m a weird exception because there’s things like Fortnite with many billions of revenue and my understanding is they’ve never sold anything but cosmetic items and in game currency.
So yes, we have to have regulation of the market, because the people are retarded.