“Green” statements in pharmaceutical advertising

Sustainability must not be the main message

The first of the cases concerned the question of whether a proposal for a comparative advertisement complied with the requirement of objectivity according to section 4(2) of ENLI’s Promotion Code which inter alia specifies that pharmaceutical advertisements must be complete and objective. ENLI’s Appeals Board found that the advertisement in question was contrary to the objectivity criterion.

The specific advertisement primarily concerned climate claims in terms of the recyclability of pharmaceutical applicators, and the advertisement was based on a comparison with the corresponding medicinal product of a competing pharmaceutical company.

ENLI’s Appeals Board noted inter alia in its justification that it is contrary to the objectivity criterion when the main message of an advertisement or commercial is environmental considerations and recyclability. Such information may be included as a complementary element to the core health-related information but must not constitute the main message. Advertisements and commercials must thus always be based on professionally relevant information about the medicinal product.

Climate report as indirect advertisement

The other case involved a supplementary training event during which a pharmaceutical company wished to present the results of a climate report on the use of a specific class of medicinal products in the context of medical devices. The climate report did not meet the obligation for documentation pursuant to section 7(5) of ENLI’s Promotion Code and could therefore not be used to document circumstances concerning a medicinal product’s efficacy or safety profile.

ENLI’s Panel remarked, inter alia, that the report and the presentation could only be used if it could be perceived as neutral and not as an indirect advertisement for the company's medicinal products.

In the case concerned, the Reviewers’ Panel found that there was a risk that the report was used as indirect advertising of the company's medicinal product because the presentation on the climate report was supplemented by two other presentations on the pharmaceutical group in general and the company's medicinal product. The presentation on the climate report moreover did not meet the criteria for an academic presentation as the main objective was to provide information on the impact of the medicine on the environment, as opposed to focusing on the patient.

What can be deduced from the two cases?

Based on the two cases, ENLI has inter alia made the following general statements on use of information on environment and climate:

• Environment/climate must only be used in comparative pharmaceutical advertising as long as it is not the supporting element of the advertising. It may only be used as secondary and supplementary information to other relevant professional information on the medicinal product.
   
• The objectivity criterion supports that medicinal products are not marketed on irrelevant parameters that may influence health professionals' assessment of the therapeutic efficacy of the medicinal product in relation to the patient.

You can read more on the use of information on environment and climate in ENLI’s newsletter which can be found here (in Danish only).

If you have any questions to medicinal products or questions related to life science in general, you are welcome to contact Emilie Lerstrøm, director, eml@lundgrens.dk.