Drugs on the Market

If Only All Business Was This Recession-Proof Sector

Is it too late to quit the ad game and become a pharmacist? So you might ask yourself as you digest the data from a new report by IMS Health. While the rest of the economy was going to seed, sales of prescription drugs rose last year by 11.8 percent, to $192 billion from $172 billion in 2001. (The figures are based on wholesale prices.)

That actually represents a slowdown in the growth rate, the research firm notes, due to a relative paucity of product launches and “generic erosion” of some major drugs whose patents lapsed.