Like many patients, I make frequent trips to the doctor. There's always that seemingly endless wait. Waiting in the Waiting Room. Waiting in the exam room. Waiting. Waiting. Frankly, I become bored. During one visit - after I perused the golf course paintings, thumbed through the magazines left by other patients, and scrutinized the proudly displayed diplomas - I noticed a consistent presence: the pharmaceutical industry. I decided to write down the names of all the products I saw in the exam room. Mind you, this list doesn't come from waiting area, nor the hallway, nor lab, nor even the office in its entirety. Merely one little exam room:

Flexeril
Tylenol 8 Hour
Zomig
Betaseron
Trileptal
Carbitol
Cymbalta
Depakote
Ticlid
Lexapro

Neither does this list represent the universe of drug names I saw in the room. Logos were affixed to posters, calendars, instruments, note pads, pencils, and a host of other artifacts. As with stadiums, I expected see signs that read the "Rozerem Room" or the "Cylert Closet".

You might ask why should we as patients be concerned about this kind of advertising. The International Herald Tribune recently reported about one reason. "Spending on consumer drug advertising, meanwhile, has been growing robustly, from $1.1 billion in 1997 to $4.2 billion in 2005, according to a report to Congress by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In the first nine months of 2006, spending rose 8.4 percent, to $3.29 billion, and was on track to reach $4.5 billion for the year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, an advertising research firm." http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/22/business/drug.php?page=2

Further, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising - all $4.5 billion of it - is only one way in which the industry promotes its wares. Drug makers also field expensive sales forces, offer incentives to pharmacies, entertain lavishly at trade shows, dole out free samples, and maintain detailed data on physician prescribing and consumer buying habits. In all, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the industry's marketing costs as a percentage of revenue exceeds 35%. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244#fnr13

With this excessive and costly physician information overload, is it any wonder why, when the doctor finally enters the exam room, cannabis becomes denigrated? After all, advocates of a simple plant can't compete with a multi-billion dollar advertising campaign. Or can we?

What if each of us the next time we visited a physician became reps for our own industry? A wait of any length in a doctor's office will easily reveal who the pharmaceutical rep is: the impeccably dressed individual carrying a big bag who seems to gain access to the office quicker than any of the waiting patients.

Certainly portraying a rep might not lessen our wait, but getting into the office what counts. Many doctors, while polite, won't listen all that keenly to the drug reps - they're not patients. But doctors will listen to us.

The recipe? Dress nicely, be polite, and carry a packet of professionally prepared materials about cannabis. For help getting started, visit OPN's library http://www.ohiopatient.net/v2/content/view/31/53/. Be prepared for rejection - every sales rep should - but be persistent. To one office, I carried a copy of Drug War Facts http://www.DrugWarFacts.org, signed it like a rock star, and gave it to the physician asking that he keep it in his library reference materials.

There's an old saying in sales and marketing: repetition = recognition. Perhaps I'm forever the optimist, but I believe that the more we professionally 'sell' cannabis to physicians and as more of us do this on a regular basis, the medical community will eventually 'get it'.

But if not, in a mere two years, we'll be reading Sativex on posters, calendars, instruments, note pads, pencils, and a host of other artifacts as we wait and wait and wait.

Mary Jane Borden
OPN President