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Warning issued after advert suggests NHS staff endorse popular weight loss drugs
4 February 2025, 08:05
LBC can reveal the Advertising Standards Authority issued a warning to a weight loss treatment provider over an advert which appeared to imply its services were backed by NHS workers.
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The ad which read ‘There’s a reason NHS workers choose Juniper to lose weight,’ has been slammed by one campaigner who shared the evidence with us.
It is prohibited to advertise prescription-only medicines in the UK, and it is against both NHS and watchdog rules for NHS staff to endorse medicines.
Georgie Aldous, a social media influencer who campaigns for tighter restrictions on weight loss jabs following a health scare while taking Mounjaro, said he was shocked when he came across the advert online.
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Georgie told LBC: “When an NHS worker died from an injection how can you be allowed to say that NHS workers are using it?
“The sponsored stuff is glamorizing it too much because it should be seen as a serious medical treatment.”
A report said Mounjaro was linked to the death of 58-year-old NHS nurse Susan McGowan, after she took two doses of tirzepatide in the two weeks before she died on September 4, 2024.
An Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) spokesperson said: “We have received complaints about [the Juniper advert] and have subsequently issued an Advice Notice to the advertiser.
“This signposts potential problems under our rules and provides them with an opportunity to review their advertising so that they are confident they are compliant.
“Alongside the issue of the ad potentially promoting a prescription-only medicine to the public (prohibited by our law and the rules), the broader concerns we had in this case were the potential misleadingness of the ad to imply NHS workers ‘choose Juniper’ and that the ad ran contrary to the rules that prohibit health professionals or celebrities endorsing medicines.”
A spokesperson from Juniper said: “We are aware of the recent Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) advice notice regarding one of our recent ads. We take all advertising complaints very seriously, and while we work to resolve the matter with the ASA, we have removed this ad from circulation. We encourage other industry players to demonstrate the same level of cooperation.
“It is also important to emphasise that Juniper’s approach to patient safety is industry-leading, and we embrace the new GPhC guidelines as we continue to add to our 18 peer-reviewed studies attesting to the rigour of our platform.”
It came after the ASA issued a warning to weight-loss prescription-only medicine advertisers in December last year, and announced it was using its AI-based Active Ad Monitoring system to track adverts for GLP-1 medications and flag any that flouted the rules.
Despite the warnings, the watchdog said it was continuing to catch rule-breaking paid-for online adverts, as well as social media promotions and influencer endorsements.
Meanwhile, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has made it tougher to get a hold of weight-loss jabs from online pharmacies.
It will no longer be enough to require people to fill out a patient questionnaire, pharmacies must instead conduct a proper two-way consultation with the patient.
The GPhC, which regulates pharmacies, said it was responding to concerns about people being prescribed the jabs when it was unsafe.
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) raised the alarm after becoming aware of people being wrongly prescribed the drugs who have previously had eating disorders, or whose body weight is already low.
