Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20136

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Moynihan R
NZ to get tough on drug ads
The Australian Financial Review 2000 Jun 23

Full text:

As Australia considers lifting its ban on advertising in the $3 billion prescription drug market, New Zealand is looking at re-imposing restrictions.

Spending on ads has more than doubled in the past year in New Zealand, and there are at least a dozen TV ads promoting pills for diseases including obesity, hair loss, arthritis and influenza.

Like the US, New Zealand is unusual in the world in allowing full advertising of prescription drugs directly to the public. Any move to tighten up in NZ could have serious ramifications for the pharmaceutical industry’s global push to speak more directly to those who buy its products.

A spokesperson for the NZ Ministry of Health told The Australian Financial Review the Government was giving serious consideration to changing laws to wind back ads directly targeting the public.

“The Government feels uncomfortable about the ethics, and appropriateness of these ads…and is concerned people are not fully informed of the benefits and risks”, he said.

It is understood Ministry officials have recently produced a proposal for draft legislation which would curtail the ads.

The NZ pharmaceutical industry is set to hit back with the public launch of a major research document today and plans to take a more active role in the debate.

General manager of the NZ industry lobby group RMI, Mr Terence Aschoff, says there is evidence mass advertising has brought many benefits.

“They are diseases that people don’t usually go in and get checked for – diseases like obesity, heart disease, asthma and diabetes – where there is under-diagnosis and under-treatment”, he said.

Back in Australia the debate over whether or not to allow drug advertising to consumers continues, with ongoing controversy surrounding GlaxoWellcome’s flu education campaign, currently running alongside its marketing of flu drug Relenza.

One Glaxo ad run repeatedly in the national press portrays a petite young woman as the common cold on the left hand side of the page, and a large “butch” looking woman as the flu on the right. The ad is titled: “You’re more likely to go to bed with the one on the right”.

Public health expert Professor Stephen Leeder described the promotion as sexist saying: “I’m surprised a company of Glaxo’s reputation put this ad out”.

But country GP and influenza researcher, Dr Richard Watts, who has acted as a consult for GlaxoWellcome, strongly endorses the campaign to educate people about the difference between the cold and the flu.

“If it means people come and see me so I can give them the choice of using the drug Relenza or not, I think it is a reasonable thing to do”.

The creative design of the ads were handled by global media ad agency Medicus R&R.