For the past 30 years, turn on the television and, at some point, you’ve likely encountered an “ask your doctor” ad. They’re the ones that look to sell you medications and often depict very non-pharmaceutical images — ones of people dancing, painting, or frolicking about sun-lit fields of flowers.

True, many of those same ads also end in a short string of terrible things that might happen if you take the drug, but the visuals tell a different story.

Now, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing for curbs. Christina Jewett, a correspondent at The New York Times who covers the Food and Drug Administration, has been following this story. She recently spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: How should I understand Mr. Kennedy's passion about this issue? I mean, he talks about false and deceptive advertising, or would you say this is more a reaction to the emphasis in medicine and our culture on taking pharmaceutical approaches in general?

Christina Jewett: He essentially wants to sort of turn back the clock on this to before 1997, when a lot of these ads were in print because they were required to disclose all the risks and lots of information. So, I think that's sort of the thinking behind that, is that it might reduce the sensibility that that these drugs are going to be a real game-changer for people.

Brancaccio: There can be a lack of subtlety when you see a short, say, 30-second or one-minute TV ad. I mean, it's a short format, and it's certainly not a peer-reviewed medical journal, is it?

Jewett: I was going through some of these letters to the drug companies this morning, and one of them actually takes on a prostate cancer drug. It says, you know, it shows a man painting a portrait, building a table, training a dog. And, you know, in reality, the major clinical trial found that about half the people had a major response to this drug. So it looks like the FDA is really going to be leaning on drug companies to try to put a finer point on what they tell the public about sort of how much these drugs are going to change their lives.

Brancaccio: Now, before 1997, as you say, there were strict rules about touting prescription medicine on American television. Then, they allowed it — allowed, in part, because we have the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution about "government shall make no law restricting freedom of speech." Now, pharmaceutical companies, which don't like these restrictions, are going to make the Free Speech argument.

Jewett: That's right. What changed in '97 was that the ads could go on TV with a major risk statement. So those are the things we're all familiar with — the sort of sudden death, fainting, all the other terrible things that could happen related to the drug, and that if they, you know, put on a toll-free number or a website address, that they were totally fine. And so this effort is to really just turn back that clock to 1996.

Brancaccio: Right. And as a practical matter, the way it would work is the Trump administration could change the rules, [and] pharmaceutical companies and advertising agencies would have to comply — pending, I assume some sort of legal challenge on First Amendment grounds.

Jewett: That's certainly possible. You know, one of the first barriers some of my sources are pointing out is that rule-making is tedious, exhaustive, and time-consuming. And there are some people who've sort of looked at this administration and said, "Well, they like to make a big announcement, use the bully pulpit, apply pressure." You know, will they go through this tedious process of rule-making? And, of course, as you mentioned, will this survive First Amendment challenges? If you're going to tell drug makers they can't show people dancing, I think there's a lot to watch here in the coming months and years.