In the late 90s the FDA loosened their requirements for pharmaceutical advertisements. Prior to 1997, the FDA had demanded that drug companies list all known side effects and possible contraindications in their ads. This made it difficult to market drugs successfully. With these demands lifted, and the requirements reduced to a list of the most common side effects, a toll free number, and a website, the floodgates opened for direct to consumer advertising.

Now, it's hard to turn on American TV without seeing some drug ad for some condition - many of which, many of us have never heard of. And since that time, Big Pharma has put quite a spin on a number of these drugs - all for the sake of increasing their profit margins.

One of the most obvious examples of this is the birth control pill Yasmin, which was touted as having a number of benefits that it didn't have, while potentially serious side effects that it did have were minimized. In this video on the marketing of Yasmin (the number one birth control pill in Canada), we get a bird's eye view of how Big Pharma's advertising machine creates a blockbuster drug, and the truth is much of it is all smoke and mirrors. Caveat Emptor (buyer beware).