It has been announced that advertisements for three supplement brands claiming to treat a range of medical conditions, including autism and ADHD, have been banned in the UK.
A paid-for Facebook advert for Aspire Nutrition in April said: “The secret weapon parents of ASD kids swear by”, while text in the form of a review attributed to “Tara K. Verified Buyer”, read: “This has helped my five-year-old with level two autism so much. “Within the first week his meltdowns decreased by 80%. He is communicating so much better… he is starting to show kindness and empathy to his little sister.” Further text read: “As parents of children with autism, we all share the same dream: to see our children thrive in school.”
Another paid-for Facebook ad in January, for Drop Supplements, stated: “For people with stress, anxiety, brain fog, ADHD … Happy Mind Drops – your new secret adaptogen against stress! Prepare yourself to unleash your true potential and banish your mental barriers.”
A third paid-for Facebook ad for Spectrum Awakening stated: “My five-year-old son Scout is diagnosed with receptive expressive language disorder and sensory disorder. Until I found Spectrum Awakening he could barely put a sentence together with very limited speech and words and lots of jargon.” It went on: “The first supplement we tried was Power and Focus and within the first three days he started using way more words. Within a week he was speaking sentences. I’m absolutely amazed that I can’t wait to order more.”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found that the claims that each supplement, or substances in them, could help to prevent, treat or cure autism breached regulations after investigations.
Aspire Nutrition said they had stopped sending adverts to UK residents who visited their website and had withdrawn the ad entirely for all audiences after being informed of the complaint. Drop Supplements said their adverts featuring Happy Mind made no direct or implied statements about curing, treating or preventing ailments or diseases. However, the ASA said the advert’s claims would be understood by most consumers as implied claims that the product could prevent, treat or cure human disease. Spectrum Awakening did not respond to the ASA’s inquiries.
The ASA told each firm to ensure their future advertising did not claim that food – in these cases in the form of a supplement – could prevent, treat or cure human disease.
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Such work by the ASA is most laudable, in my view. Misleading advertising is endangering the health of consumers thousands of times every day. However, the firms affected by the ASA reprimands are probably not all that worried. In fact, I imagine that they are laughing their heads off:
- The chances of getting caught for misleading advertising are truly minimal.
- If they are unlucky and do get caught the punishment is negligible.
- There is little to stop them re-offending.
It is time that the ASA (and the equivalent organisations in other countries) get more power, more support and more money to effectively go after offenders in such a way that others think twice before breaking advertising rules.
3 Responses to Adverts for supplements claiming to treat autism were banned
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Part of the difficulty for the ASA in terms of having “teeth” is that it is essentially a voluntary organisation by which the advertising industry polices itself, rather than being an agency established by statute. To a large extent it has traditionally worked quite well, in the days of print media and television/radio advertising. But in the modern internet age, something more, and stronger, may be needed.
Currently my Facebook feed is awash with slick and horrible adverts for a purported UVC lamp called the “UVLizer”. https://uvlizer.co/
It is touted as a cure for house dust mite, bedbug, and mould problems. It seems clear to me that someone has bought a containerload of these lamps from China, and is now aggressively trying to get them all sold. A few observations might be made:
1) UVC radiation will kill insects if strong enough, and if it reaches them. Insects deep in the crevices of bedding will not be reached by the UVC.
2) UVC produces ozone, which is poisonous and smells horrible.
3) UVC is very dangerous to the eyes of humans and pets. These lamps apparently come with a thirty-second delay when you press the on switch, but there is nothing to stop anyone entering a room while the lamp is on.
4) House dust mite allergy is actually a reaction to protein in the mite faeces, which the UVC will not remove, even if it kills the mites.
It is interesting that the regulation of advertising in the UK began because of a ‘medical’ product; Carr’s Carbolic Smoke Ball https://magicsilverbullet.substack.com/p/the-case-of-the-carbolic-smoke-ball
The problem lies not so much with the ASA as with Trading Standards. As some readers may know, the ASA has a deal with Trading Standards to escalate noncompliant advertisers. The ASA applies a voluntary code and can’t apply any really meaningful sanctions. But Trading Standards is backed by legal force. The problem with that is that most Trading Standards regional offices are staffed by maybe two or three people. The last government stripped out most of their resources. I have interacted with some Trading Standards officers who are very good, but there are simply are nowhere near enough of them. I hope the new government understands the value of regulation. The last one really didn’t like it at all.
However despite the deal, the ASA commonly takes up to a year to refer non-compliant advertisers to Trading Standards. Meanwhile advertisers are just carrying on as normal, posting new ads on various platforms and starting up new websites. They need to be nipped in the bud, but that will require political will. This blog post of mine from 2019 provides more detail, and have yet to see evidence that things have improved since then. The fact is, that the ASA is as effective as it can be, but operates under ridiculous constraints. One such constraint is that it is sometimes impossible to identify the business responsible for the advertising, and if the advertiser refuses to respond to the ASA there is really nothing that can be done.
None of this is helped by Brexit. There was robust unfair trading legislation from the EU which was translated into UK law, but I have not heard about this being properly applied since we left the EU.
Good points! In an age when anyone can advertise anything instantly on media platforms, there needs to be much more resource to protect consumers. There is too, the whole rea of where the responsibility of a platform provider begins and ends….