Google Restricts Drug Advertising

Until recently, typing the name of a prescription drug into an Internet search engine would produce an array of ads from unlicensed pharmacies offering the drug for sale. These unlicensed pharmacies used the targeted advertising feature offered by many search engines to directly reach their audience and to bypass the regulations surrounding the sale of prescription drugs. In an attempt to reduce the unregulated sale of addictive painkillers, tranquilizers and anti-depressants by unlicensed pharmacies operating on the Internet, Google has announced its plans to stop accepting advertising from unlicensed pharmacies. Google has said that it will use a third-party company to weed out these advertisers and has also decided to ban the names of certain controlled drugs from use as keywords in the search-related advertising. (The ban will not affect the search engine results, only the targeted advertising). Google is not the first search engine to take such steps. AOL began to do so two years ago, and Yahoo and MSN both stopped accepting such advertising last month. Summary by: Sue Diaz