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.
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.
Image credit: Roberto Sorin
Great stuff NZOFP.
I’m sick of those “I didn’t know that when you were pregnant, there were vaccines you had to get” ads. It was and is, all bs. You should NEVER put anything into your body while carrying precious cargo.
My late Doctor would be highly disgusted at what is happening now. Yes, he was an old fashioned, sensible “first do no harm” Doctor.