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Objective: This study aimed to elicit and compare the responses of Australian consumers towards New Zealand (NZ) direct-to-consumer-advertisements (DTCA) for prescription medicines and matched pharmaceutical company-sponsored advertisements from Australia., Methods: A survey questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of residents in a metropolitan area in NSW. Potential participants were randomised to receive one of four different advertisements: two for weight loss and two for Alzheimer's disease. A total of 413 responses were received and analysed., Results: Participants reported that they were not likely to ask for a prescription from their doctor as a result of seeing any of the advertisements in the study. The Australian disease awareness advertisement that did not refer to a medicinal treatment was perceived as more valuable than the NZ DTCA or other Australian advertisement. Overall, participants found it easier to make sense of the more informational advertisements, and felt that there was insufficient information regarding the disease/condition and treatments in the more emotive and transformational advertisements., Conclusions: While there is concern over potential negative effects of pharmaceutical-sponsored disease awareness advertisements, this study found that Australian consumers perceived an informational advertisement with a list of disease symptoms to be valuable., Implications: These findings contribute to debate in New Zealand and Australia regarding DTCA and disease awareness advertising, and have the potential to inform guidelines relevant to the advertising of prescription medicine in each country.

Introduction and Aims: With the headline 'Ecstasy Over The Counter' in a popular daily newspaper, the debate on drug policy officially entered the arena of the 2003 New South Wales (Australia) State Election. The debate resurfaced in the lead-up to the 2004 Australian Federal Election. This paper analyses the pre-election coverage of drug policy issues in four Australian newspapers., Design and Methods: Four high-circulation daily newspapers were monitored for a one-month period prior to both elections and analysed for their coverage of drug policy, particularly with respect to the policy of the Greens., Results: The newspapers took different perspectives on drug policy issues, with two framing it in emotive terms as a moral debate and two framing it as political manoeuvring., Discussion and Conclusion: The newspapers focused upon emotive and sensationalist factors. They did not provide their readers with information or a rationale for the formulation of drug policy, be this from a harm minimisation or zero tolerance perspective.

Introduction and Aims: Australia, like several other countries, has a self-regulatory approach to advertising. However, in recent years the effectiveness of the regulatory system has been questioned, and there have been increasing public calls for an overhaul of the system. Following a formal review in 2003, the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy proposed a revised Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code (ABAC), which came into operation in 2004., Design and Methods: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of this revised system. From May 2004 until March 2005 television and magazine advertising campaigns were monitored for alcohol products. Over this period 14 complaints against alcohol advertisements were lodged with the self-regulatory board, and the authors recruited an independent expert panel to assess the advertisements and complaints., Results: In eight of the 14 cases a majority of the judges perceived the advertisement to be in breach of the code, and in no cases did a majority perceive no breach. Conversely, however, none of the complaints were upheld by the Advertising Standards Board (ASB) and only one by the ABAC Panel., Discussion and Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the decisions made by the ASB in relation to complaints against alcohol advertisements are not in harmony with the judgement of independent experts, and that the ASB may not be performing an adequate job of representing community standards or protecting the community from offensive or inappropriate advertisements. Further, it appears that the revisions to the ABAC code, and associated processes, have not reduced the problems associated with alcohol advertising in Australia.