Marketing of pharmaceuticals is unlike selling of any other products or services. This is because of the fact that the ultimate user of medicines do not decide whether to buy or what to buy. That decision is taken by the physician on behalf of the patient. And the pharmaceutical companies deal with physicians on a regular basis for their sales. Success of a pharmaceutical product in the market is directly related to the generation of prescriptions by the medical practitioners. It is this peculiar nature of pharmaceutical marketing that brings the medical fraternity and the pharmaceutical companies very close world over. There is a strong motivation for the growth of this intimate relationship. For the pharma companies, increase in prescriptions will decide the sales and profits and for doctors dependability of the companies on them can bring unlimited returns by way of financial incentives. In this mutually beneficial relationship, the patient pays a huge price in terms of buying unwanted and costly medication. In most industry segments, there has been slashing of prices by the manufacturers for the last six years because of competition. This benefit of drop in prices on account of the liberalization policy has been possible because of sharp decline in raw material prices and the industry's changed approach of reducing profit and increasing sales volume. Pharmaceutical industry is probably the only sector which has never felt the need to reduce the prices voluntarily despite a steady drop in bulk drug prices and substantial rise in sales volumes. Now, OPPI is talking about a code of conduct for pharmaceutical marketing. The code urges the pharma companies not to offer any financial or other incentives for prescribing the medicines and they should promote products based on adequate, unbiased and truthful technical data. It is a nice thought and patients will welcome the initiative if OPPI can be instrumental in implementing the same. Indian pharmaceutical industry has been registering 15 to 18 per cent annual growth in sales and a much higher profit percentage for some years now. The main contributing factor for its achievement in the domestic market is aggressive and sometimes highly unethical brand promotion through physicians. Almost all pharma companies indulge in this practice to push their sales and doctors are showered with financial incentives to attain the sales targets. India's largest selling pharmaceutical product with a sales of Rs 108 crore is Pfizer's Corex. The product, just a cough syrup with not much of a therapeutic value, is No.1 because of brand promotion. Phensydyl, another cough syrup of Nicholas Piramal, is the second largest selling product with a sales of Rs 100 crore, is another success story of brand promotion. OPPI is seemingly trying to bring some order in this area. The question now is whether OPPI will be able to bring about such a change by asking the companies to stop promotional expenditure. It is just an eyewash. OPPI has not talked about how it will monitor adoption of the code by its members. Usually brand promotion is a secret deal between the doctors and the pharma companies. The pharma companies are extremely careful not to let anyone know about such deals with doctors. After all, if any of the OPPI members truthfully implement the code, that should reflect in sharp reduction in the MRP of their products. This needs to be watched in coming days.