Oh, I’m in the health sciences. There’s actually a very valid reason for that. Health education and medical literacy in the US, for lack of a better phrase, is absolute dog shit. For vast swaths of the population, there’s little way to feed them necessary health information unless we put it on their fucking TVs. Of course, no one wants to pay for endless PSAs. Hence, why we allow pharma companies to foot the bill, under the condition that their ads are not misleading or exploitative.

Example. You know how commercials will begin with lines like “do you ever feel a pain in your chest?” Or, “do you ever find it hard to breathe?” While companies only air it because they want to sell their drugs, the FDA allows it to happen because it also teaches people to recognize the signs and symptoms of certain cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

There’s actually a lot of research about this if you’re interested. If you search up “pharmaceutical advertisement pubmed”, you’ll get a lot of relevant hits.