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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has today said it has banned four ads promoting prescription-only weight-loss pills to the public, including one that appeared on the side of a London bus. 

Two ads by Voy under its ‘The weight is over’ campaign were banned, one of which was seen in an image on a bus in July this year which featured a hand holding a white pill.

Another ad, shown in August on video on-demand services, featured a pill and the words ‘It’s kind of a small deal’. Both ads had smaller text referring to a glucomannan food supplement.

The ASA said: “The imagery and wording in both ads were likely to lead people to understand they were advertising the newly available oral Wegovy tablets, rather than a food supplement.

“The small-print references to glucomannan weren’t enough to change that impression and the video-on-demand ad also directed people to a website featuring prescription-only weight-loss medicines.”

The ASA also banned a YouTube ad for Juniper which contained the words ‘The weight loss pill is here’ and claims about results and eligibility.

An Instagram ad for MedExpress with the words ‘new weight loss tablets’ and ‘no needles’ which invited people to ‘join the waitlist’ was banned too.

The ASA’s investigations manager Catherine Drewett said the rulings “make clear that advertisers need to consider the overall impression their ads create”.

“A medicine doesn’t need to be named for an ad to be understood as promoting a prescription-only medicine and references to a non-medicinal product in small print won’t necessarily change that impression,” she said.

“Using our AI monitoring, we have this sector under ongoing review, and we won’t hesitate to take action against ads that break the rules.”

The bans follow the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s approval of the UK’s first GLP-1 receptor agonist tablet for weight loss and weight management on June 11 this year.

The Wegovy tablet can be prescribed to adults with obesity, who have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, or who are overweight with a BMI between 27 and 30 and have at least one weight-related comorbidity.

“Both the law and our rules make clear that prescription-only medicines (POMs) cannot be advertised to the public,” the ASA said.

“Our own consumer research has found that people can interpret an ad as promoting a POM based on a combination of signals, including its images, wording and references to weight-loss. This means an ad can break these rules even if it doesn’t name the medicine directly.” 

Last month, the ASA banned ads promoting prescription oral weight-loss medicines to the public for the first time.

The adverts by two pharmacies, Simple Online Pharmacy and Pharmacy Online, promoted oral GLP-1 treatments through paid social media ads and website content and invited people to join waiting lists, register their interest and pre-order treatment.

The ad for Simple Online Pharmacy, which was seen on June 1, promoted oral GLP-1 treatments before any such medicine was authorised in the UK.

The ASA said it was “continuing to keep a close eye” on ads “that break the rules” using its AI-based Active Ad Monitoring system.

“We’re also working closely with our partners at the MHRA and the General Pharmaceutical Council who have important roles in this area,” the ASA added.