Doctors are calling for an end to prescription drug advertising directly to NZers

Aggressive marketing for prescription drugs, such as drugs for weight lossgoing directly to the public risks harming patients and putting undue pressure on an already stretched system, the health selection committee has heard.

For years, doctors have called on legislators to end pharmaceutical companies directly promoting prescription drugs to consumers – something only allowed in New Zealand and the US. They say the Therapeutic Products Actbefore Parliament offers the perfect opportunity.

The current rules create a “biased, overly optimistic view of advertised drugs and encourage patients to request treatments they don’t need,” wrote Dr. Samantha Murton in an 11-page contribution to the committee, in her role as President of the Council of Medical Colleges.

Murton told the committee that the “often predatory advertising” preyed on patients who were most vulnerable and needed to end. Her submission was unanimously endorsed by all 17 medical education institutions represented by the council.

READ MORE:
* Head Doctor analyzes her own “miserable” prejudices as the cultural safety plan is launched
* Ads for prescription drugs cause people to unnecessarily search for prescription drugs, research shows
* GP parliamentarian wants to ban advertising for prescription drugs

Of particular concern was type 2 diabetes prescription drug Ozempic, described as the most popular drug in Hollywood. The drug has just received MedSafe approval for use in New Zealand and has already piqued patient interest, said Murton, also a GP in Wellington.

“I can guarantee that once Ozempic is available, people will ask me to prescribe it for weight loss, even if they don’t [type 2] diabetes mellitus. I had a conversation about it yesterday,” Murton told the committee.

Prescription drugs can cause significant damage if they weren’t used properly — which is why the barrier of a prescription existed in the first place, Murton argued.

GPs were already spending “about 48,000 hours a year dealing with questions that just come up through this commercial,” Murton, who acted in her role as president of the Council of Medical Colleges, told the committee. That was the equivalent of about 24 full-time doctors.

Christchurch GP professor and GP Dr Les Toop told the Ozempic committee “the system will cost money and patients will cost money” if direct-to-consumer advertising could continue.

Another, existing weight-loss drug came with a 22-page list of side effects and interactions and side effects, some of which could be fatal, but patients still asked for them, Toop said.

“It may end up with a prescription that the doctor won’t be happy with, [or] it can end without a prescription and the doctor and patient will be unhappy – and the doctor will be late.

“If you impose that on a system that is already struggling with both emergency care and scheduled care across the country, you can imagine that a series of those consultations in the middle of busy operations is extremely unfortunate and unnecessary.”

Another Christchurch GP and GP professor, Dr Dee Mangin, said the drugs being advertised were the newer ones, meaning “much less is known about their safety”.

“One in 10 have a serious safety issue that emerges after they are introduced to the market…so they are inherently less safe,” Mangin told the select committee.

The Therapeutic products Bill seeks to differentiate natural health products from medicines and medical devices and requires non-medical products to obtain marketing authorization before being imported into New Zealand or sold or exported abroad.