Ads for weight-loss prescription-only medicines (POMs), which are against the law and advertising rules, remain a focus of our monitoring, investigation and enforcement work. Today, jointly with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), we’ve issued an updated Enforcement Notice – a formal warning to businesses, mainly pharmacies, that make these medicines available to the public.

The Enforcement Notice reminds advertisers that advertising POMs, including those used for weight management, is banned. It also sets out the enforcement action the ASA and our partners will take against advertisers and businesses. Importantly, it provides further clarity on the kinds of claims and images in an ad that are likely to break the rules.

The update follows nine ASA rulings published in July, which gave clear examples of where, even without naming products such as Wegovy or Mounjaro, ads were still seen as promoting weight-loss POMs.

Advertisers should avoid:

  • language that refers to POMs, such as “weight-loss injection”, “obesity treatment jab” or “GLP-1”
  • imagery likely to be understood as depicting an injection pen
  • ads for general weight-loss products or services that direct consumers to other ads, such as website landing pages, promoting POMs

We continue to use our AI-based Active Ad Monitoring system to conduct systematic sweeps of paid online ads and social posts to identify and tackle weight-loss POM advertising. This remains an enforcement priority and we’ll issue further updates on our compliance actions in the coming months.

View the full Enforcement Notice. 

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