Via Jim Fossett (and Bioethics News) comes this NYT story about how a Minnesota law limiting gifts to doctors has affected drug reps there. It seems some of the glamour is gone:
Two years after Minnesota officials forbade drug makers to give doctors more than $50 worth of food or other gifts per year, drug company sales representatives there are having a far harder time marketing to doctors. The rule change was small and almost accidental a state official decided to interpret a 1993 law differently from his predecessor. But the effect on drug makers has been profound.
The year after the change, the number of visits that Minnesota primary care doctors accepted from drug sales representatives decreased at about twice the rate of the decline reported by primary care doctors nationwide, according to a survey by ImpactRx, a New Jersey firm that tracks pharmaceutical marketing. A growing number of Minnesota hospitals and clinics have banned routine visits from them.
We have an extended hallway, and the sales reps sit there now without anything except maybe Styrofoam cups filled with M&Ms. The 30 pizzas are gone, said Dr. Michael Severson, a pediatrician in Brainerd, Minn. Its made the doctors think about whether to ban them.