Free societies enjoy a defining feature that distinguishes them from totalitarian States. The particular feature I have in mind is that, in a free society, what’s not prohibited is allowed. In other words, a free society’s citizens - including corporate citizens - can do whatever they like unless it’s legally prohibited. On the other hand, the default setting to which citizens under totalitarianism are subjected is that they can only do what’s expressly authorised by the State; everything else is verboten.

It is New Zealand’s current status as a free(-ish) country that gives pharmaceutical companies carte blanche to advertise their pharmaceutical products. Big Pharma’s advertising entitlement in New Zealand arises – simply and by default - because current law does not prohibit such advertising.

New Zealand is one of only two “developed” countries on Earth that permit unrestricted direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription medicines. The other is the United States.

New Zealand’s open slather DTCA permission bestows upon Big Pharma a free pass to encourage Aotearoa’s legions of hypochondriacs and malingerers to harass their doctors for medicines they don’t need.

Big Pharma company Merck marketed and advertised pain killing drug “Vioxx” in New Zealand from 2000. In 2004 Merck withdrew Vioxx globally – including in NZ - because the drug significantly increased cardiovascular risks (heart attacks, strokes etc.) – significant risks that Merck had itself discovered but deliberately chose not to disclose.

Under the current Medicines Act 1981(NZ), the only restriction on advertising medicines is that a medicine cannot be advertised unless it has been formally approved for distribution in New Zealand.

The Medicines Act expressly provides that “No consent [to distribution] shall be deemed to warrant the safety or efficacy of the medicine to which the consent relates”. But of course, a Prime Minister will occasionally guarantee that a medicine is safe & effective:

Medicines New Zealand’s Code of Practice contains general advertising requirements, including that advertisements and promotional material:

• should be in good taste and must not bring the pharmaceutical industry or HCPs [health care professionals] into disrepute

• must not be deliberately disguised

• should be clear, legible and appear on a background sufficiently contrasting to enable them to be read by the ordinary viewer

• should not by implication, omission, ambiguity or exaggerated claim mislead or deceive, or be likely to mislead or deceive, consumers or HCPs, abuse the trust of or exploit the lack of knowledge of consumers or HCPs, exploit the superstitious, or without justifiable reason, play on fear

• should not have depictions that unduly glamorise the product or portray unrealistic outcomes.

• Therapeutic claims must be factual and adequately referenced.

However, the Code is voluntary. That is, it has absolutely no legal effect. The Advertising Standards Authority has a Therapeutic and Health Advertising Code, but that Code is also voluntary.

With the advent of the COVID virus, New Zealand’s Government itself filled the DTCA “regulatory vacuum”, and did so with a vengeance. Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government took it upon itself to employ the vast apparatus and resources of state to positively advertise and otherwise promote COVID vaccines on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

The Prime Minister extolled the merits and virtues of COVID vaccines, particularly Pfizer’s “BioNTech” vaccines, but also Moderna’s vaccine and (for New Zealanders with a particular aversion towards mRNA vaccines), the Novavax vaccine (which caused rare but serious blood clotting).

The Labour Government made COVID vaccination compulsory for vast swathes of New Zealanders, implemented a “vaccine pass” regime for the virtuous vaccinated, instituted relentless multi-media propaganda promoting COVID vaccination and locked New Zealanders down until COVIDtearoa achieved stratospheric levels of collective COVID vaccination.

Crucially, the Labour Government’s response to COVID was entirely medicalized. It was all about taking never-ending COVID vaccinations. Even now, it’s all about the meds - despite overwhelming evidence that physical exercise and not being obese significantly lowers the risks of contracting COVID, and of getting seriously sick with the human-augmented common cold.

Labour’s COVID Meds Mania was in keeping with Woketearoa’s overarching ideologies and political strategies to denude each Aotearoan of any residual sense of personal agency or self-responsibility, and to engender and entrench an overwhelming sense of dependency on the Suffocating Nanny State.

There’s of course a rich irony in all of this. The former Left was deeply suspicious of Big Corporate (including Big Parma). The new Identitarian Left is besotted with global corporatism…Pfizer, Blackrock, Microsoft & Amazon Web Services (subsidised data centers sucking from New Zealand’s electricity system)...

Buoyed by bumming up to Pfizer and other COVID vaccine providers, Labour in 2023 enacted the Therapeutic Products Act. That legislation filled the pharmaceuticals advertising legal vacuum and expressly allowed Big Pharma to advertise their products in New Zealand. To be advertised, a product that MedSafe had authorised to be marketed in New Zealand simply had to:

• name the person using the advertisement to promote the product

• not contain any information that is, directly or by implication, inconsistent with the product’s market authorisation

• not promote the product, directly or by implication, for an off-label use

• not contain any misleading information

At the same time as giving the green light to pharmaceutical companies to advertise in New Zealand, Labour gave the red light to New Zealand providers of natural health products. The Therapeutic Products Act required natural health providers to obtain regulatory authorizations to market their products in New Zealand and subjected them to all sorts of stringent standards relating to ingredients and other “qualities”.

Labour further displayed its true colours by giving brown light endorsement to “rongoā”. Taking the same obscurantist approach to the meaning of “rongoā” as the Wokerati take to the alleged Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Therapeutic Products Act steadfastly refused to define “rongoā”, with the Act stating that a natural health product “is a rongoā product if it…is manufactured by a rongoā practitioner [undefined]…and…is intended for use in a rongoā service or activity [undefined]. The Act established an extensive “rongoā advisory committee”, with mandatory “knowledge, skills, and experience in...rongoā and mātauranga Māori”.

“Rongoā” is claimed to be a traditional Māori approach to health, integrating herbal remedies, massage, prayers and tohungas. Like the Treaty Principles, “rongoā” is mystically obscure, and evolving. According to the Therapeutic Products Act, the “rongoā” provisions of the Act “recognise and respect the Crown’s obligations to give effect to the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi in relation to rongoā”.

Aotearoa’s Big Pharmac Advertising Endorsement and Natural Health Products Persecution ended when the current Government repealed the Therapeutic Products Act on 18 December 2024.

However, the Rongoā Race Hustle remains alive and well. Since 2020, Accident Compensation Corporation has funded Rongoā treatments by accredited Rongoā practitioners, as part of ACC’s “kaupapa Māori approach” for “mana-enhancing recovery”. Rongoā’s ACC funding is climbing towards $10 million.

In New Zealand, all Medicos are equal…But some Medicos are more equal than others. Big and/or Brown Pharma…Good. Non-Rongoā Natural Remedies…Bad.