The Irish Medical Organisation is pleased to make a submission on a review of the Code of Standards for Advertising, Promotional and Direct Marketing in Ireland as part of ASAI’s consultation activities for the preparation of improving the Code. The IMO welcomes ASAI’s intention to modernise the Code in order to align it with more up to date public attitudes and policy.

• The IMO is calling on the ASAI to provide an update to the Code on protecting children from the harms of HFSS marketing.
• The IMO is calling for the introduction of a total ban on all advertising and promotion of alcohol in view of the devastation it causes amongst our population.
• The IMO acknowledges s.8.1 of the Code and requests advertising accuracy when an advertisement contains scientific and health related issues, to prevent biased or inaccurate information that may be detrimental to the consumer
• The IMO requests that the Irish Medicines Board reviews pharmaceutical advertising protocols to ensure that appropriate statistical terms are used (ARRs, NNTs, NNHs) and that all adverts highlight study lengths, trial population and to accurately display drug cost, instead of reference to relative risk.
• The IMO is of the opinion that independent statutory regulation with penalties for non-compliance is a much preferred method of control, as industry self-regulation or co-regulation are demonstrably unlikely to assure compliance