Allies and adversaries of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alike were elated when an X post on Monday claimed the Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary planned to ban pharmaceutical ads from television.
But Kennedy made no such announcement, and no such plans exist.
“BREAKING: Robert F. Kennedy Jr has announced plans to ban pharmaceutical advertisements on television,” wrote an X account named “Unusual Whales” early Monday. Unusual Whales is a service that provides data on unusual stock trading activity.
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Politicians and media personalities circulated the news, most of whom praised Kennedy for acting on his long-stated desire to bar such ads from the airwaves.
“Great idea,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote on X. “Oh huge,” conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf chimed in. “What about podcasts?” MAGA podcaster Tim Pool mused.
The praise wasn’t limited to MAGA types. “Pharmaceutical Ads Banned on TV, Could Fuel Station Group M&A,” media analyst Rich Greenfield wrote alongside a flame emoji.
“I think most of us in public health would support this,” Dr. Ashish Jha, former President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response coordinator, wrote, though he noted that court challenges have impeded such efforts in the past.
Unusual Whales did not provide a source for its claim, which was also circulated on an eponymous subreddit with 223,000 members. A follow-up post pulled text from a December New York Times story that indicated Kennedy had sought to ban the ads.
The department’s press office said the news was false.
“The social chatter you are hearing that HHS banned pharmaceutical advertising is not accurate,” HHS told the Daily Beast.
The incident shows how easily misinformation can spread on X despite its use of “community notes”—a feature that allows users to add context to a post. The Unusual Whales post did not get flagged by users with a community note.
Kennedy has indeed expressed the desire to ban pharmaceutical ads from television. Only two countries, the U.S. and New Zealand, permit the ads to run unrestricted—a fact Kennedy mentions frequently.
But efforts to ban the advertisements have often been met with legal challenges. Courts have long found that commercial advertisements represented protected speech under the First Amendment. In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a Vermont law that regulated pharmaceutical ads.
The pharmaceutical industry has grown to nearly $40 billion in advertising this year, according to an AdWeek report this month, up from $12.2 billion in 2015.
Kennedy has found others sympathetic to his views within the Trump administration. Elon Musk expressed support for Kennedy’s proposed ban on pharma ads in an X post in November, declaring “no advertising for pharma.” Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has also said he would help enforce a ban.
