The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has taken action against nine advertisers for promoting weight loss prescription-only medicines (POMs) to the public in breach of UK law and advertising regulations.
Six of the offenders are pharmacies registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).
ASA emphasised that all injectable forms of weight loss medication are POMs and cannot be advertised to the public, even where adverts do not explicitly name a medicine.
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Therefore, advertising bans cover not only direct references to weight loss drugs – such as Wegovy, Mounjaro, Ozempic and Saxenda – but also indirect references including phrases like ‘weight loss injections’, ‘weight loss pen’, ‘obesity treatment jab’, ‘GLP-1’, and any imagery depicting unbranded or branded injection pens or vials.
In December 2024, ASA issued a warning to businesses and individuals targeting the public with ads for these medicines. Since then it has used an AI-powered monitoring system to identify and investigate problematic adverts at scale.
Between February and June 2025, ASA monitored over 20,000 adverts from 35 ‘high-priority’ pharmacies, identifying 10,000 ads related to weight loss treatments.
Of these, 80 directly named a weight loss drug, pointing to a 99% compliance rate on that particular element of the rules. However, most non-compliant adverts did not reference a named medicine but used imagery or language implying the use of POMs.
ASA said it has further investigations underway and rulings to come, a bulk of which involve affiliate advertisers. The regulator added that it will be conducting ongoing monitoring sweeps using its AI monitoring system.
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The GPhC has previously issued a joint enforcement notice with ASA and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in a bid to tackle inappropriate advertising of weight loss medicines.
Responding to the action, Dionne Spence, chief enforcement officer at the GPhC, said: ‘We are continuing to work very closely with the ASA and MHRA to tackle adverts for prescription-only medicines by pharmacies that don’t comply with the law and rules on the advertising and promotion of medicines.
‘We have referred pharmacies to the ASA and the MHRA where we have identified concerns about their advertising and promotion through our inspections and investigations.’
Ms Spence said the GPhC would carefully review the latest ASA rulings to consider whether further enforcement action was required in the case of the six pharmacies registered with the council.
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She also warned that failure to comply with the rules could result in action being taken against the pharmacy, the pharmacy owner, the superintendent pharmacist, or the pharmacy professionals involved.
The GPhC added that it will be highlighting these rulings to pharmacy owners and superintendent pharmacists to support ongoing compliance.
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