The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld two complaints against online pharmacy Voy over ads for prescription-only weight loss drugs.
In a ruling published today, the ASA said it had investigated three promotional emails from Menwell Ltd, trading as Voy, that were received in November 2025.
The regulator found that the emails advertised prescription-only medicines (POMs) to the public, which is illegal, and “had not been prepared in a socially responsible manner”.
Ads under investigation
The ASA said the first email from Voy included text that stated, “Our extended offer is coming to an end: Expired”, “Last day to save Up to £70 OFF all plans” and “Black Friday is almost over for good”.
The ad also “featured an image of a Wegovy-branded injection pen device with a detached cap”, it added, as well as text that said, “Start now, not on 1st January”.
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The regulator said the second email included a banner stating, “Up to £70 OFF” and “Black Friday ends tonight - time left: Expired”, and text that read “One day only”.
It added that the email also featured an image of “an injection pen with the text ‘tirzepatide’ on the label”.
The third ad offered “£50 off” weight loss plans with Voy and featured the same image as the second email, it noted.
Voy’s response
Voy told the ASA that the emails in question were customer relationship management (CRM) communications “sent to individuals in its systems and not accessible to the general public”.
It said the ads were sent to a group of recipients “who had actively opted in to receive marketing communications, such as product updates and promotional offers, and who could opt out at any time”.
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The pharmacy added that “while it could be necessary” to refer to POMs in “essential service communications”, it “accepted that a promotional email should not have included a named POM”.
And it said it “had addressed the error internally and reinforced controls to prevent future marketing communications from referencing specific POMs”.
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Voy also “acknowledged the ASA’s concern that the use of time-limited ‘Black Friday’ pricing could be seen as pressuring consumers into purchasing a medicated weight loss programme”.
It told the ASA the promotion “related to the overall programme and did not change their clinical safeguards”, adding that “no patient could access prescription treatment without a clinical assessment” and “clinicians could prescribe, delay or decline medication regardless of any promotional pricing”.
The pharmacy also said it had “reviewed” its “approach to urgency-based language in CRM messages to ensure future communications were balanced and did not encourage consumers to make rushed healthcare decisions”.
Breached code
The ASA said it “understood that recipients of the ads had opted in to receive marketing updates and information about weight loss” - but noted that “prior engagement with the service and opting in to marketing updates did not mean recipients had made a specific enquiry about named POMs”.
“We also understood that the emails were not service-related communications that were sent to existing customers who were users of weight loss POMs,” it added.
And it found that by featuring images of “named POMs”, namely Wegovy and tirzepatide, the ads breached the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code against promoting POMs to the public.
“Undue urgency”
In its ruling, the ASA emphasised that “marketers needed to take particular care when presenting and administering any time-limited offers” for medicated weight loss programmes, whether they involve over-the-counter drugs or POMs.
The “decision to sign up to a medicated weight loss programme should be presented as one that required time and thought from consumers”, it said.
It acknowledged that Voy’s Black Friday campaign ran between November 17 and December 3, and that “consumers would have received the emails on different dates, depending on their distribution” - but said “the end date of the promotion was not stated in the ads”.
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This meant consumers “would have likely” thought the promotion was either due to expire on November 28 or “due to finish imminently”, the regulator said, and so would have understood “there was a strict time-limited opportunity to take up the offer”.
It added that “by emphasising time-limited ‘Black Friday’ discounts which were only available for a short period” and “using urgency-based language”, the emails “encouraged consumers to make a rushed transactional decision to purchase or sign up to a medicated weight loss programme for fear of missing out”.
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The ASA also said it had “sought advice” from the UK medicines regulator, which “expressed concern that the ads may not have supported rational use of a medicinal product”.
And it concluded that because Voy’s emails “created a sense of undue urgency to respond quickly”, they “had not been prepared in a socially responsible manner” and therefore breached the CAP’s code on social responsibility.
The regulator warned Voy that the ads “must not appear again in the form complained of” - and told the pharmacy “not to promote POMs to the public in future” and “to ensure their future advertising did not create an undue sense of urgency” for consumers considering weight loss medicines.
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It comes after Voy was named along with three other online pharmacies in an investigation into the “inappropriate” prescribing of weight loss jabs.
Consumer watchdog Which? revealed last week that Superdrug, MedExpress, Voy and Zava sent its team weight loss jabs “based on false health information and a fake GP address, without seeking to verify this information first”.
