'YES on 79' Launches First TV Ad Vs. $78 Million Drug Industry Ad-Blitz

'YES on 79' Launches First TV Ad Vs. $78 Million Drug Industry Ad-Blitz

Consumer, Health & Senior Advocates' TV Ad Is 'David' to Drug Industry's Deceitful $78M 'Goliath' Ad Campaign. AARP Endorses Prop 79 as Schwarzenegger Backs Pharma's Measure

WHAT: Roll Out of First TV Ad for 'Yes on Proposition 79' Campaign (Cheaper Drugs More Californians Can Count On)

WHEN: Thursday, September 29, 2005 11:00 a.m.

WHERE: AIDS Healthcare Foundation Executive Offices 6255 Sunset Blvd., Suite 2100 (at Argyle) Hollywood CA 90028

WHO: Michael Weinstein, President, AIDS Healthcare Foundation and introducing (via television commercial) Leona Tockey, a Bay Area California resident with high monthly prescription drug costs

*Visual: copies of the 60 second television ad for 'Yes on Prop. 79' campaign will be provided to the media

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- On the heels of the American Association of Retired Persons' (AARP) endorsement of California's Proposition 79 earlier today, advocates representing millions of California consumers, senior citizens, patients, and workers in the 'Yes on Proposition 79' campaign will unveil their first television commercial for the campaign's drug discount ballot measure in a press conference and commercial screening in Los Angeles, Thursday, September 29th at 11:00am.

"Officials in Washington and Sacramento have largely given a blank check to the pharmaceutical industry, and hardworking Americans everywhere are now paying for it with their pocketbooks and their lives," said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), a co-sponsor of the 'Yes on 79' campaign and producer of this first Prop 79 television spot. "Leona Tockey, who is featured in this commercial, is but one of millions having trouble affording her monthly medicines. The $78 million that Pharma is spending here in California on a TV advertising blitz to hoodwink California voters about Proposition 78 -- which one LA Times' columnist even called 'bamboozlement' -- could easily help Leona, or others like her, pay for her $400 monthly prescription drug bills-for the next 16,000 years. The drug industry and its corporate lobbyists are instead circling the wagons to blur the truth about Proposition 79 and protect the status quo."

Pharmaceutical companies have poured a record-breaking $78 million into Proposition 78, a smokescreen measure designed to defeat the health and consumer advocate-supported Prop 79 -- because they fear the real, enforceable discounts that Prop 79 would provide.

Because the 'Yes on Prop. 79' campaign has, and continues to be, so financially outmatched by the drug industry cartel and its $78 million media campaign for its own sham ballot measure, the 'Yes on Prop. 79' supporters were forced to embrace the exact opposite approach to producing and running their own television commercial. Prop. 79 supporters from AHF shot the spot on a shoestring budget (approx. $1,200); utilized the compelling story of Ms. Tockey, a real Californian with expensive monthly drug bills who would actually benefit from Prop. 79 (unlike in the ubiquitous and slick Prop 78 ads, which use a white-haired, patrician looking Hollywood actor to portray an allegedly concerned doctor); the group has made (and is making) limited cable buys for the spot (CNN, A&E, Lifetime, etc) in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and either Sacramento or San Diego for roughly $5,000 to $10,000.

"We are urging all concerned Californians -- our 'Vioxx voters' -- to do what Washington and Sacramento officials, including Governor Schwarzenegger, are unwilling or unable to do: take back some degree of control over a drug industry run amok and vote 'Yes' on Proposition 79," added AHF's Weinstein.

Proposition 79: Cheaper Drugs More Californians Can Count On, supported by Health Access California, Consumers Union, California Association of Retired Americans, Congress of California Seniors, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the League of Women Voters, and over one hundred other endorsing organizations, will provide affordable prescription drugs for 8-10 million Californians, using the purchasing power of the state to leverage enforceable discounts from prescription drug companies. A competing measure, the pharmaceutical industry-backed Proposition 78, relies on manufacturers to volunteer discounts, and has no enforcement mechanism. For more information on Proposition 79, visit www.voteyesonprop79.org

Source: Yes on Prop 79

CONTACT: Lori Yeghiayan of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, +1-323-860-5227,
or cell, +1-323-377-4312, for Yes on Prop 79

Web site: http://www.voteyesonprop79.org/