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Control of Drug Advertisement Intensifies
The country will stop issuing public advertisement licences for three categories of prescription drugs starting from Thursday, according to officials with the State Drug Administration ��SDA ��and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.
According to China Daily report, the three categories include all brands and products to do with injections and injected medicines, antibiotic drugs and intravenous drips containing 50 millilitres or more of liquid.
Advertisements for products falling within these categories will be finally banned from public media on April 1 this year. From then on, adverts will only be allowed in professional medical media, officials said.
The move is part of the SDA's campaign to regulate the advertisement market for medicines, Li Qin, an official with the SDA's Circulation and Regulation Management Office, said Thursday.
The SDA is busy drafting more regulations to supervise advertisements for prescription drugs, Li said.
China's media has been plagued by a flood of medicine advertisements in recent years. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce has received an increasing number of complaints about misleading medicine advertisements.
The administration called on all industry and commerce supervisory bodies across the country to strengthen their attacks against illegal drug advertisements at a national conference on supervising the medicine market held in mid-January this year.
The SDA launched a prescription and non-prescription drug classification system on January 1 last year.
Under this new system, those medicines that fall under the prescribed category must be sold and used only under the guidance of medical professionals. Non-prescription medicines or over-the-counter ��OTC �� drugs are available without prescriptions, but they must have instructions for users on the packaging.
OTC medicines are now tagged with a special identification mark. Labels and instructions for OTC medicines must be approved by the SDA.
The SDA believes the adoption of the classification system and the closer management of prescription and OTC medicines that it entails may help bring China's medicine market closer to international standards. The administration pledges to work to enhance supervision and management of drugs while improving safety and effectiveness, said Zheng Xiaoyu, director of the SDA.
Zheng admitted that more regulations need to be launched to guarantee the smooth operation of the new classification system.
Within the next two years, a system to regulate the drug market will be established, which will include rules to control medicine adverts, new examinations for OTC drugs and new regulations and classification standards for prescription and non-prescription drugs, according to Zheng.
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