The new GAO report on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, Prescription Drugs: Improvement Needed in FDA’s Oversight of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising,(GAO-07-54) says that DTC spending has been growing at a little more than three time rate as spending on direct promotion to physicians.

There are two reasons for that:

We are increasingly moving to a consumer-driven health care system, where patients have, and want, more access to information. And that’s all the ads are: information.

But another important factor may be the growing number of complaints targeting drug company efforts to see doctors and discuss new products with them. The claim is that these efforts are tantamount to influence peddling and bribery. Lunches, dinners, ballpoint pens, note pads, you name it and someone says it is inappropriate. And critics are pushing legislation to prohibit such gifts.

When Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002, which imposes huge new regulatory burdens on public companies and their boards, it initiated a growing trend to switch from publicly held companies subject to "Sarbox" to privately held companies not subject to the law. It’s the path of least regulatory resistance.

Similarly, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the drug industry increasingly shifts to DTC advertising as it becomes the path of least resistance to silly claims that doctors are being bought.