The New Zealand Outdoors & Freedom Party is calling
on the Government to immediately end New Zealand’s status
as a dangerous international anomaly by enacting a total
statutory ban on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) of
prescription medicines across all domestic media
platforms.
The call comes as the Deputy Prime
Minister, Hon. David Seymour, has agreed to
formally present the petition of Aly Cook to the House of
Representatives during the parliamentary session on
Tuesday, 23 June, 2026.
The petition,
brought forward by Outdoors & Freedom Party Board Member
and Broadcasting Spokesperson Aly Cook, demands that the
House of Representatives ban all advertising by
pharmaceutical companies and of any pharmaceuticals on all
forms of New Zealand media, including television, radio,
newspapers, magazines, billboards, and digital
platforms.
New Zealand and the United States remain
the only two high-income nations in the world that allow
multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical corporations to market
branded prescription drugs directly to the
public.
“Medical choices must be guided by
objective health professionals providing genuine informed
consent based on patient need, not by slick, emotionally
manipulative commercial marketing campaigns,” says
petitioner Aly Cook. “Prescriptions belong in clinics, not
in commercials.”
The Outdoors & Freedom
Party’s submission weaves in damning written evidence from
the Council of Medical Colleges (CMC), which represents all
17 medical colleges and over 9,000 practitioners in New
Zealand.
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The submission evidence directly quotes the
CMC’s March 2023 written submission to the Health Select
Committee on the Therapeutic Products Bill, which warned
Parliament that pharmaceutical ads present a “biased,
overly optimistic picture of advertised medicines and prompt
patients to request treatments they do not need,”
highlighting that these predatory tactics target the most
vulnerable and lead directly to “inappropriate
prescribing and overtreatment.”
“Our overstretched
front-line medical workforce is facing severe burnout, yet
we are allowing corporate marketing to deliberately waste
their time,” Cook states. “Data from the CMC’s July 2023
historic Open Letter, which was co-signed by Sir Ashley
Bloomfield and former Prime Minister Helen Clark, shows that
banning direct-to-consumer drug ads would instantly free up
our medical professionals by an estimated 48,000 hours a
year. Those are precious clinical hours currently wasted
dealing with commercial queries that would be much better
spent helping sick Kiwis get better.”
As the Party’s
Broadcasting Spokesperson, Cook also highlights a profound
conflict of interest within the New Zealand media landscape,
pointing to the tens of millions of dollars in
pharmaceutical advertising revenue flowing into domestic
media companies annually.
“We must look at who is
paying the bills,” Cook states. “When mainstream
media outlets rely heavily on corporate pharmaceutical
revenue to survive, it introduces an unavoidable conflict of
interest. As the medical colleges noted in their March 2023
brief, our healthcare environment shouldn’t be controlled by
those who manufacture the medications. A media ecosystem
financially dependent on Big Pharma cannot serve as an
objective watchdog for the public. To safeguard true media
independence, we must remove this financial
lever.”
The submission draws a sharp line between
independent public health education and commercial
exploitation, citing Official Information Act data revealing
that the New Zealand government spent over $45 million on
the COVID-19 vaccine advertising campaign alone between 2021
and 2022.
“While public agencies must have channels
to broadcast emergency safety data, allowing private
corporations to buy up the exact same prime-time slots
commercialises medicine and floods the public square with
competing corporate interests trying to monetize public
health anxieties,” says Cook.
The Party points to
a major, live international precedent to back its case: the
United States is currently dismantling the very system New
Zealand allows. The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) and the FDA have launched a sweeping federal
crackdown on deceptive drug ads, enforcing “radical
transparency” rules that mandate exhaustive safety
disclosures within broadcast slots. Simultaneously, the
End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act (Senate Bill 2068)
has been introduced to the U.S. Senate to outlaw the
practice entirely. he End Prescription Drug Ads Now
Act (S. 2068) was introduced to the Senate by Senator
Bernie Sanders (Independent from Vermont) alongside Senator
Angus King (Independent from Maine).
When they
introduced the legislation, Senator Sanders heavily targeted
the pharmaceutical industry’s massive marketing budgets,
famously stating that the United States and New Zealand are
the only two developed nations in the world that still allow
direct-to-consumer television and print advertising for
prescription medication.
“The consensus across
doctors, health professionals, and consumer advocates is
absolute, and as CMC Chair Dr. Samantha Murton summarized
perfectly in her July 2023 declaration: ‘New Zealand doesn’t
need to better regulate DTCA, we need to ban it.’ If the
United States, the global epicenter of commercial
pharmaceutical marketing is actively shutting down this
‘pipeline of deception’ because of its destructive impact on
public health, this leaves New Zealand on track to
become the only developed nation in the world that still
permits Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising. Time
to change that!” – Cook concludes.
Following
the formal presentation by Deputy PM David Seymour on
Tuesday, the petition will be officially referred to a
parliamentary select committee for consideration. Cook has
indicated she intends to appear in person before the
committee to present extensive evidence and defend the
integrity of New Zealand’s broadcasting and healthcare
sectors.
Notes:
The Petition:
Petition of Aly Cook: Ban all advertising by
pharmaceutical companies and of any pharmaceuticals on any
New Zealand media.
- Petition
of Aly Cook: Ban all pharmaceutical company advertising in
New Zealand media
Key Evidence
Filed: Quotes and data from the Council of Medical
Colleges (CMC) official written submission to the Health
Committee (5 March 2023) and their multi-organisational Open
Letter (14 July 2023) Microsoft
Word – DTCA Open Letter.docx , identifying the
48,000-hour annual drain on general
practitioners.
U.S. Precedent:
References the ongoing administrative crackdown by the U.S.
FDA/HHS and the End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act
currently before the 119th United States Congress.
cmc-submission-on-therapeutic-products-bill-2023.pdf
pr-cmc-big-names-urge-government-to-take-on-big-pharma.pdf
Direct
to consumer advertising position statement |
RNZCGP
U.S. Precedent: References
the ongoing administrative crackdown by the U.S. FDA and the
End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act currently before
the 119th United States Congress.
FDA
Launches Crackdown on Deceptive Drug Advertising |
FDA
