Are these marketing practices ethically responsible?An important case of marketing drugs to targeted populations involves the drug Strattera, Eli Lilly’s prescription medication that controls attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. The ad ran in magazines such as Family Circle (September 2003) under the simple title “Welcome to Ordinary.” The ad pictured two boys holding up a model airplane that they had finished building, a challenging task for a child with ADHD. The ad reads: “4:30 P.M. Tuesday. He started something you never thought he’d finish. 5:20 P.M. Thursday.

He’s proved you wrong.” The ad suggests that, if a child with ADHD is not “ordinary,” it is the parents who are “wrong” because all it would take would be Strattera to solve their problem. The same issue of Family Circle contained ads for McNeil Pharmaceutical’s Concerta and Shire Pharmaceutical’s Adderall, the two major competitors to Strattera.