• Brandweek, Friday, December 15, 2006 11:30 AM

The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report that slams the Food and Drug Administration. It says the agency's ability to halt misleading drug advertising is "limited," that it has failed to stop repeat offenders and that it has no consistent system for policing bad ads. The GAO chastised the FDA for similar reasons in 2002.

If the FDA discovers drug ads it believes are false or misleading, it issues warning letters to companies. The letters are almost always obeyed. But the GAO report claims that the FDA has inconsistent criteria for evaluating drug ads. It also states that the FDA has gotten slower in issuing regulatory letters to offenders since 2002, and that companies have often discontinued the offensive advertising by the time the warnings go out.

A representative for the FDA accepted some parts of the report, but challenged others, such as the claim that FDA enforcement was inconsistent.

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