Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17872

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Publication type: news

ASMI urges S3 advertising
Pharmacy Daily 2010 May 5
www.pharmacydaily.com.au

Full text:

THE Australian Self-Medication Industry has today called for reforms to advertising regulations for medical products to
allow consumer promotion of Schedule 3 medications in Australia.

ASMI said that the current prohibition on consumer advertising of S3 medicines unless they have an Appendix H listing
“is short-changing consumers, and harming manufacturers who are unable to bring products to the notice of consumers who
may benefit from them”.

Executive director, Juliet Seifert, said “It does not make sense to have a category of medicines that is available to
the public, without prescription, but which is not able to be advertised to those who may need them.

“If these medicines are sufficiently safe to be allowed to be sold without the need for a prescription, it also makes
sense to allow them to be responsibly advertised,” she said.

The move follows this month’s rescheduling of codeine-containing analgesics, but also applies to other S3 items
including proton pump inhibitors and treatments for eye infections and weight loss.

Seifert said the situation was damaging to the industry, with one major pharmaceutical firm required to restructure
operations because its S3 product wasn’t able to gain the advertising necessary to reach a broad-based consumer market.

“If the current restrictions remain the S3 category without advertising will remain a backwater of little known products
that are largely uneconomic for providers,” she warned.

“It’s time that the advertising controls relevant to the Pharmacist Only category were reviewed in light of recent
scheduling decisions, and the need for increased consumer awareness about latest treatment options,” Seifert added,
saying that without knowledge of the alternative treatments available patients are also more likely to have to visit “an
already overstretched GP” for minor ailments, “when an effective OTC remedy is available at a pharmacy”.