Cases involving weight-loss medication could feature in several chapters in a pharmacy and medicines law textbook. Notably, advertising complaints are being handled by different regulators. Presumably that’s because although both the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) both handle complaints about the advertising to the public of Prescription Only Medicines (POMs), which is prohibited by regulation 284 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, only the ASA can deal with cases that also breach the Code of Advertising Practice. The different regimes are illustrated by the recent MHRA and ASA cases described below.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has just announced that two pharmacies, Bolt Healthcare Ltd t/a Bolt Pharmacy and Oushk Pharmacy Ltd have amended their advertising following MHRA action on complaints, and will ensure that Prescription Only Medicines (POMs) for weight loss (including reference to the class of medicines called GLP-1s, or to “weight loss injections” or similar) are not promoted to the public.
Nearly a year ago, Chemist & Druggist had reported  that the processing by Oushk Pharmacy of orders for weight loss jabs had grown from “20 a week” to tens of thousands per month.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just published rulings on cases involving Juniper Technologies UK Ltd (trading as “Juniper”), an online pharmacy business. The allegations were that the Advertising Code of Practice was breached in October 2025 by a paid-for Facebook advert, jointly published by The Ryan Family and Juniper.
The caption stated:
“I probably needed a hug, but I decided to start a medicated weightloss [sic] journey with Juniper instead and I really didn’t expect it to bring so much more than progress on the scales. For me it’s about my confidence returning, the energy I thought I’d lost and a reminder that showing up for myself was always worth it”.
Further text stated, “ad – my code KELSEY will give you discount x” and included the hashtags “#weightlossstory #weightlossjourney #weightlossprogress #4stonedown #juniper”.
The video showed various clips of a woman looking after her baby, walking with a pram, posing for a picture and standing in a locker room holding a protein shake bottle.
It was alleged that the advert:
- suggested that new mothers should prioritise weight loss after birth which exploited their insecurities around body image and was therefore irresponsible; and
- breached the Code because it promoted POMs to the public.
Juniper did not accept that the Code of Practice had been breached and that the advert encouraged new mothers to prioritise weight loss. They said the intended message of the ad was not that weight loss should take precedence over motherhood, but that mothers could seek a balance that felt right for them. Juniper claimed that the link from the advert to the initial webpage was compliant with the CAP Code, as it did not provide any specific POM information or advertising.
The complaint was upheld. The Code required that marketing communications must be prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society and should not include gender stereotypes that were likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence. In the context of an advert that focused on motherhood and which featured scenes of a new mother and her new-born baby, viewers were likely to interpret the statement “I probably needed a hug, but I decided to start a medicated weightloss [sic] journey with Juniper instead” as meaning the new mum had been struggling after having a baby, but had chosen to start a medicated weight-loss programme rather than seek support for how she felt emotionally. The ASA considered the ad therefore presented the medicated weight-loss programme as an alternative to seeking emotional care and support, and suggested that emotional well-being could be achieved by losing weight, particularly after giving birth.
The ASA decided that a consumer who had clicked on the ad and selected that they were “new to weight loss medication” had not sought out further information about a condition, and were actively presented with Wegovy and Mounjaro injections, both of which were POM options. The ASA therefore considered that a link in the advert to the landing page via a filtering page referenced POMs and thereby breached the prohibition on advertising POMs to the public.