October 12, 2016.
The National Medicines Health Agency (ANSM) wishes to better control advertising around medicines. Objective: to put an end to marketing which would make drugs look like candy.
Stop deceptive marketing
Mojito-flavored cough syrup, a strawberry-flavored antidiarrhoeal, cappuccino-flavored paracetamol… Pharmaceutical companies do not hesitate to resort to the lexical field of confectionery to sell their drugs. Deceptive marketing, according to the ANSM which wishes to better control this advertising so as not to mislead the consumer.
Strawberry flavored doliprane remains a medicine and cannot be given to children lightly, for example. ” A drug, we only buy it for its therapeutic virtues », Alerted Michèle Delaunay, oncologist and PS member of the Gironde, at the microphone of France Info. ” Today, marketing is all about taste and scent. “
Taking paracetamol is not trivial
According to her, even paracetamol is not trivial: “ As soon as one is above two or three times the dose, the liver which metabolizes it, is saturated », She explains. ” But if you reach four times the dose because the child stole the drugs from the drawer, the risk is severe acute hepatitis which can lead to emergency room admission or even destruction of the liver which will require a transplant. »It is therefore essential to stop the sale of what she calls drugs ” Tagada strawberry “.
It is to put an end to these abuses and the dangers they represent that the ANSM presented a draft of recommendations on the names of drugs in which is proposed stricter regulation of the mention of the aroma in the name of the drug. A project that is viewed with a negative eye by pharmaceutical companies who have reminded that all drugs currently on the market have been validated by the ANSM.
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