The ‘defense’ is the first amendment. It would violate it if you prevented people from telling other people about their products.
Commercial speech in the United States has limitations. Historically commercial speech was not protected by the 1st amendment. Protections and limitations have largely been established over the past 50 years in Supreme Court rulings [0].
[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/939/corporate-speec...
Cigarettes physically harm pretty much all of their users, and they are very addicting leading to psychological and financial harm to a large number of users too, and they are available over the counter with no more than an age check to try to keep them out of the hands of non-adults.
It's fairly easy to find a substantial government interest in the physical and psychological health of the population, and regulating the spread of something addicting that directly harms that interest directly advances that interest and doesn't seem to be going too far.
Prescription drugs cannot even be sold until the government approves them, and even then they can only be sold if prescribed by a doctor. Those measures should already keep them out of the hands of those who would be harmed by them, so it is hard to see what substantial government interest a TV ad ban would directly further that couldn't be better addressed without restricting speech (e.g., limitation on who doctors can prescribe the drug to).
I'm not saying that it wouldn't be possible to sufficient justify a TV ad ban on prescription drugs. Just that it is not anywhere near as easy as it is for cigarettes.
I fully think we should be banning prescription drugs. There's precedent already for banning product ads - tobacco ads are no longer allowed for example.
I think a lot of these ads prod hypochondriacs to rush to their doctor (or perhaps even the ER) to "tell them about their symptoms" which just drives up costs for everyone.
Au contraire, people will live with all sorts of debilitating conditions, assuming that treatment is exceptionally hard.
I lived with an impacted wisdom tooth for a long time, and when it was removed I suddenly realized that it wasn't just a natural way for my body to feel.
I also just assumed that I had to poop explosively in the morning just because, and not because I drank the large cup of milk my mother gave me.
And that's normal. Loads of people are like this.
¹ I have absolutely nothing against what I'm sure is a very fine drug - it was merely the first result in my search for "most advertised prescription medication" and I'm sure that the side effects are not representative of typical outcome and that someone suffering from serious rheumatoid arthritis is better off taking the drug than not.
This isn't whats happening is it? The exemptions to free speech are well known and taught in entry level civic classes [1]. There are quite a few. Whats happening here is another discussion on the intricacies of free speech (which have hundreds of pages of professional opinion and case law for each exemption) full of nuance. However here, as is the case for most discussion forums, you can only fall into two groups: anarchist or fascist.
Heres a more honest view: given free speech laws in the US it's not clear what we should or what is right to do with regards to advertising medicine. We will probably have a populist exemption when it's needed, as we have in the past.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
I don't share you confidence that this is very obviously worth another exemption at a federal level, but I do share your concern with misinformation through these sorts of ads.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that criminalization tends to only stop law-abiding citizens, have second-order effects that discriminate against those whose needs were not considered by the policy makers at the time, create a hole that's usually filled by another issue/crime, and tend to be far less effective than they were made out to be. Just so my position is clear :)
P. S.: I am watching the video and Tom Scott gives a very similar definition of advertisement at 3:44, and basically the whole video is about how that logic is applied in British and American laws.
P. P. S.: I am now at the last section "The Land Of The Free" (24:47) where Tom Scott talks specifically about freedom of speech in US, and basically everything in this thread is brought up by him.