A national healthcare marketing magazine looked to McGuireWoods partner Craig Bleifer for his views of recent moves by the Food and Drug Administration against direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertisements.
“I would be surprised if there are no legal challenges to this whole package of initiatives that the agency is undertaking,” Bleifer told Medical Marketing + Media in a Sept. 26, 2025, story.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA on Sept. 9, 2025, announced a crackdown on deceptive DTC pharmaceutical advertising. The move followed on the heels of a presidential memorandum and report by the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again Commission, calling for increased oversight of DTC pharmaceutical advertising, particularly associated with risk information on digital platforms.
Bleifer, who served as general counsel for Novo Nordisk and previously for Daiichi Sankyo for over 20 years before joining McGuireWoods in 2024, said a complete ban on DTC advertising likely wouldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny. However, the FDA and drugmakers could find a way to compromise, he said. “[FDA] might be willing to compromise and come to some new equilibrium that we haven’t yet invented.”