The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has taken enforcement action against a pharmacy over the advertisement of prescription-only medicines (POMs) for the first time, C+D can reveal.
On August 18, the GPhC issued an improvement notice against Glasgow pharmacy Express Healthcare Limited, trading as PharmacyOnline.co.uk, in what it told C+D “marks an escalation beyond requests to amend or remove” ads.
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In the notice, the regulator said the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had issued two rulings against the pharmacy about “failures to comply” with medicines advertising requirements, and the cases were referred to the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) compliance team “following concerns about the pharmacy’s response to the rulings”.
“The pharmacy has not sufficiently engaged with the ASA and CAP compliance team and has failed to respond to outstanding compliance enquiries,” it added.
“Repeatedly failed to comply”
The GPhC said PharmacyOnline.co.uk was handed an improvement action plan at its last inspection in January after it “offered discount codes” for POMs against advertising regulations.
Despite this, the regulator said, the pharmacy “has continued to publish advertising that promoted POMs and unlicensed medicines to members of the public”.
“This demonstrates inadequate governance arrangements and a continued failure to ensure compliance with relevant legal and regulatory requirements relating to the advertising and promotion of medicines,” it added.
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The GPhC said it has taken action because it is “concerned that the pharmacy has repeatedly failed to comply with requirements relating to the advertising of medicines and has not adequately engaged with the relevant regulatory bodies”.
The improvement notice tells PharmacyOnline.co.uk to ensure that all of its “current and future online content” complies with “relevant legal and regulatory requirements”.
The pharmacy must also “respond to all outstanding enquiries from the ASA and engage with the CAP compliance team as requested for outstanding compliance cases”, it said.
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The GPhC told C+D that failure to comply with an improvement notice “can result in referral to the registrar for consideration of disqualification”.
The pharmacy must comply with the requirements by September 15, and the regulator said it “will be following up to check it has happened”.
“We will act”
GPhC chief enforcement officer Dionne Spence told C+D that this is “the first time” the regulator has used its enforcement powers in relation to the advertising of POMs.
She said it “demonstrates that we will act where pharmacies fail to comply with requirements designed to protect patients”.
“While we continue our work to highlight the risks of using unregistered pharmacies, we want to support legitimate pharmacies to promote their services responsibly,” she added.
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“One of the key elements of our public information campaign is that fake pharmacies are likely to ignore the rules and advertise prescription-only medicines. When legitimate pharmacies do this, it makes it increasingly harder for the public to identify providers they can trust.”
Spence said that “despite repeated engagement and previous regulatory intervention”, PharmacyOnline.co.uk “continued to publish advertising that did not meet the required standards”.
“Where standards are not met, we will not hesitate to use the regulatory powers available to us to protect the public and help them to identify legitimate pharmacies.”
“Ample opportunity”
And ASA director of complaints and investigations Miles Lockwood told C+D that the ads regulator’s message “remains simple and clear”.
“Prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public. Ignoring that or failing to work with us will result in enforcement action,” he said.
“PharmacyOnline.co.uk has been given ample opportunity to get its house in order, and we fully support the GPhC’s intervention, which bolsters our ongoing work alongside partners in this sector to ensure the public are protected.”
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C+D approached PharmacyOnline.co.uk for comment.
It comes after the GPhC, ASA and Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in June warned businesses against advertising newly approved GLP-1s and those that do not yet have a licence.
And it follows C+D reporting that almost 70% of the adverts the MHRA deemed to have breached regulations in July concerned weight loss POMs.
