Physicians in every specialty, including primary care physicians, are often the targets of pharmaceutical company marketing initiatives that seek to increase prescribing of their branded medications. Some of these marketing initiatives, such as free lunches, educational dinners, promotional products, and free product samples are designed to be appealing to physicians. Young primary care physicians entering their practice should be aware of the effect of these marketing strategies on physician prescribing and on rising healthcare costs, and should consider how they should behave in order to comply with medical ethical principles, practice-wide and institutional policies as well as laws at the federal and state level that apply to these industry–physician interactions.