It asked the industry to observe a moratorium while the agency came up with some ground rules. Under guidelines released in 1985, the FDA allowed drug companies to run ads that simply raise awareness of a disease without much restriction. But if a company wanted to describe what a drug was supposed to do, it was required to explain the risks. The ads that followed fell heavily into the first category, because companies saw no way to cram sufficient information about side effects into 30-second spots. The companies began pushing for fewer restrictions, and in 1995, they gained a powerful ally in new House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who started beating up on the FDA as a “job killer.” Under pressure from lobbyists and Capitol Hill, the FDA in1997 produced new guidelines declaring that companies’ ads just had to devote roughly equal time to the risks and benefits of a drug. One year later, spending on television drug ads had more than doubled, from $310 million to $664 million. A major early beneficiary was a new generation of antihistamines that did not make people drowsy. Thanks to the advertising push, first Claritin, then Zyrtec and Allegra became some of the most frequently prescribed medications in America. These antihistamines represented a meaningful improvement for allergy suffers. The same could not be said for other drugs that manufacturers began promoting with multimillion-dollar campaigns. Take the case of Nexium, which is now infamous in the world of health care policy. Until the 1980s, doctors had treated acid reflux with