`Keep Her Awesome’ to Sleep Campaigns Skirt Drug-Ad Rules (1)

Keep Her Awesome. Sleep Normal. Be the Boss of Your Asthma. Speak Your Migraine.

Each is the slogan of a marketing campaign designed to bring a medical condition or symptom--ranging from vaginal health to excessive urination--to the public’s attention.

The pharmaceutical industry spent $430 million on 410 disease-awareness campaigns in 2016, according to a study published in January in the Journal of the American Medical Association, with little oversight. They fall outside the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of direct-to-consumer prescription-drug advertising as long as they don’t mention or promote a specific medication, and the Federal Trade Commission, which has ...