U.S. senators criticize SF company over Super Bowl commercial

SAN FRANCISCO - Outside the game, commercials are a big part of Super Bowl Sunday. Companies pay large amounts of money for their advertisements. One company based in the Bay Area has already released its commercial, and it's drawing criticism from lawmakers in Washington.

Hims and Hers, headquartered in San Francisco, is a telehealth firm, and in their latest ad, they promote a weight-loss drug similar to Ozempic.

U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) sent a bipartisan letter to the FDA about the advertisement, accusing the ad of misleading patients by "omitting any safety or side effect information when prompting a specific type of weight loss medication," according to a statement on Durbin's website.

"An upcoming Super Bowl advertisement…appears to showcase a company’s ability to prescribe and dispense GLP-1 medications to patients, including with text and claims about weight loss drugs, and imagery of an injection pen with distinctive characteristics reflective of an existing brand-name medication. However, nowhere in this promotion is there any side effect disclosure, risk, or safety information as would be typically required in a pharmaceutical advertisement," the senators wrote in part.

The other side:

KTVU reached out to the San Francisco-based firm about the controversy. 

"We agree with the Senators, Durbin and Marshall, on the value of compounding and telehealth when it comes to expanding much-needed access to personalized care. We are complying with existing law and are happy to continue working with Congress and the new Administration to fix the broken health system and ensure that patients have choices for quality, safe, and affordable healthcare," Hims and Hers said in response.