President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Tuesday pressuring pharmaceutical companies to abide by transparency laws in their advertising, particularly on social media. The administration will follow up by sending 100 cease and desist enforcement letters and thousands of warning letters to the companies, administration officials said.
The goal, administration officials said on a call with reporters Tuesday morning, is to use laws that are already on the books to ensure people receive transparent, accurate information about drugs, especially potential risk factors.
Administration officials pointed to medications or products that are promoted on social media sites like Instagram or TikTok with influencers who do not clearly identify as paid spokespeople.
Multiple studies of pharmaceutical promotions on social media have found that the information is often of lower quality than someone would get if they spoke to their doctor — and also often skirts the FDA’s regulatory guidelines. For example, a 2015 study found that only one-third of posts listed the possible harms of drugs.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, September 4, 2025 in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
“There has been broad frustration with the increasing prevalence of these ads creating a misleading impression, specifically not disclosing side effects appropriately — ads that have encroached now into social media without proper disclosures, and ads of online pharmacies that are not following the same rules that many pharmaceutical companies follow,” a senior administration official said.
But this policy — while it may rankle certain online pharmacies or upend some social media brand deals — is expected to be well-received by the broader pharmaceutical industry, a senior administration official said.
“I will tell you that a couple large pharmaceutical company CEOs have told me to take action on pharmaceutical ads, including the ads that they run,” the official said. “There’s this general frustration that we’ve created a bit of an arms race where there’s so much money going into this space.”
Enforcing the regulations, in effect, will make social media less of a Wild West and put companies on the same playing field, the official said.
Administration officials insisted it was the “boldest,” “strongest possible” action the president could take, though it falls short of a pledge Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made before taking office: banning pharmaceutical ads from TV entirely.
“One of the things I’m going to advise Donald Trump to do in order to correct the chronic disease epidemic is to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV,” Kennedy said at a Trump rally before the November election.
Asked whether the administration planned to pursue a blanket ban on pharmaceutical ads, a senior administration official said there are “no additional steps planned” beyond Tuesday’s executive action.
“This presidential memorandum is the strongest, boldest action we can take to make sure that patients have adequate safety information on pharmaceutical ads,” the official said.
The U.S. is one of two countries worldwide that allows direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements. The other is New Zealand.
