Why Are Baby Boomers Hiding Their Smile?

I wonder if we got it all wrong and just simply forgot what is important about taking care of teeth.

I was recently looking at the data for global growth trends in oral care, and I was struck by how flat the market is trending, in low single digits.

The companies themselves aren't doing badly. P&G's share is up signficantly because it bought Gillette and Oral-B. J&J jumped with its acquisition of Listerine and Rembrandt. Over the years, the Gaba acquisition has been good for Colgate.

But what about the consumers? Emerging markets like China and Brazil and Mexico are up as more and more people find toothpaste they can use everyday becoming increasingly affordable.

But I wonder if those companies have missed a beat with those marvelous baby boomers in the more developed markets who are discovering that their mouths are changing with the rest of their bodies.

In America, for example, Baby Boomers, when younger, were taught to brush after every meal or at least twice day and to see their dentist at least twice a year. Good stuff. And fluoride rinses help too. My children don't have any cavities.

But I am not a child nor are those millions of Baby Boomers in North America, Western Europe and Japan. Our mouths are not the same as when we were kids. Aging mouths generate lots of different issues, more gum disease, tooth loss, dry mouth, oral cancer, etc.

Yet I bet the vast majority of baby boomers still follow the same oral care regimen they followed as teenagers (without the Binaca).

If the senior managers in those major oral care players were wondering how they could gin up their businesses in the developing markets, they might not have to look any further than their own mirror. Or, at least, have a series of really good conversations with their consumers and their dentists. As for me, I jst bought more dental floss.

Helping Hands for the Public Benefit of OTCs

Well, an FDA advisory panel this week rejected Merck's third application bid for a Rx-to-OTC switch of Mevacor (lovastatin) because, in Merck's studies on how consumers would respond the proposed labeling, a significant group of people, for whom taking Mevacor was a wrong decision, decided to take the drug.

Okay, I won't make a flip remark about how people frequently make wrong decisions about taking drugs. But I will note that we, in the US, are missing a major public health benefit, by not giving consumers/patients more access to these life-lengthening medicines.

Almost everywhere outside of our 50 united states, consumers/patients have the opportunity to seek advice from their pharmacists about some of their ills and those pharmacists have the ability to dispense medicines to them that were once prescription-only.

Are US pharmacists any less trained than those in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia or Japan? I don't think so.

We already have a de facto third class of medicines in the US. That's what we have done by placing Nicotine-Replacement Therapy, Pseudoephedrine and Plan-B behind the counter. And we have done this without congressional legislation and with FDA approval.

If the pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare companies, public health advocates and the appropriate associations really cared for consumers and for the ability to provide life-lengthening medicines to the general populace surely a solution can be developed.

The precedents have already been established in the US. I have seen research that clearly demonstrates that, by lowering the existing barriers to access, consumers would welcome the opportunity to engage with their physicians and their pharmacists and to be more compliant and adherent with their medicines if they had easier ways to purchase their medicines.

Think about it: lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, fewer severe migraines. Longer, more productive lives. If we can truly create the will, we can easily define and implement the way.