EU advertising regulations

In looking at drug costs, we learned (at least I did), that other countries in the McKinsey comparison are much stricter than the US in how they regulate the marketing and sale of pharmaceuticals, both directly to consumers and to health care professionals as well.

My purpose in this blog is simply to bring information to light, though if you've read for a bit you know I can't help interjecting the occasional opinion. In any case,  I thought I should learn more about the laws that regulate pharma marketing and sales in the comparison countries, since it's been argued we could lower drug costs by following their lead.

So far today, I've discovered that pharma marketing and sales is one of the areas in which the European Union has taken it upon itself to offer directives. From there, many member nations (such as the UK, France and Germany) appear to have substantially adopted those regulations. In some cases such rules may have predated the EU directives, in others the adoption may not be 100% -- I haven't exhaustively dug into the matter. But it seems to me the EU directives can be taken as a reasonable proxy for the rules that prevail in much of the European Union.

A simple, though technically outdated, version of the directive on advertising can be found here. This is an EU directive of 1992. It was implemented in Britain, for example, in 1993/4. This directive is superseded by and incorporated into an omnibus directive of 2001, which you should consult if you want the latest commas and periods, but the 2001 directive is much longer, whereas the 1992 directive concentrates on sales and advertising.

If you like, you can also look over the EU's page on medicine directives generally, with links to numerous specific rules.

Finally, if you'd like some discussion of the history and context of the EU rules, look over this summary offered by the Picker Group (Europe). Apprently there has been pressure in the last seven years or so to relax some of the advertising provisions slightly for certain classes of medicine.

In any case, this is a starting point for looking at what the members of the EU think is appropriate regulation in this area for their 500 million citizens.