I work in pre-clinical pharma research, so I would love more pharma R&D spend more than most people, but I don't see a problem with promoting approved drugs for their approved indications. The industry has to get the word about new approvals to physicians as quickly as possible, because the patent term is limited. It would be foolish to trickle a new drug into the market post-approval, and it might even be unethical, as patients who could benefit would be less likely to have access. How to structure that marketing spend is another discussion (and could use a good deal of overhaul in my opinion), but the need to market new products is not that unusual.

I'm not super familiar with costs in tech startups, but do most companies spend less on marketing than product development?