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  "path": "/investigaciones/20260605/banned-medicines-ads-spain-facebook-instagram-google-tiktok/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-05T06:38:20.000Z",
  "site": "https://maldita.es",
  "tags": [
    "are actually never-authorized medications",
    "recall.In",
    "European Union Digital Services Act (DSA)",
    "the necessary data",
    "A recent investigation",
    "Reset.tech",
    "Maldita.es"
  ],
  "textContent": "Spanish law prohibits their sale and advertising, but it seems that major digital platforms operate outside the rules: of all the **medications declared illegal in Spain** during the last two years, **45% advertised on Facebook, Instagram, Google, or TikTok** after they had been banned. These were ads specifically paid for to appear in Spain, totaling at least 380,000 visualizations.\n\n**The Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS**) issues a public statement each time it **orders the banning of a medicine and its recall** , a communication that includes photos and detailed descriptions of the product. Despite this, a simple search of the ad repositories of major digital platforms reveals that**Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok do not comply with the prohibition** despite having all the necessary information at hand.\n\nProducts such as ‘Royal Honey VIP’ o ‘Vitafer-L’, which are presented as “food supplements” but**** are actually never-authorized medications, were advertised on all three platforms after they were officially banned. Vitafer-L alone published more than 80 targeted ads to appear in Spain**, some of them reaching 110,000 impressions**.\n\n\n\n\n_Advertisements for banned medicines on TikTok, Facebook and Google_\n\n##  20 illegal medicines since July 2024\n\nIn the last two years, the AEMPS has declared **20 products as illegal “medicines for human use”** , ordering the prohibition of their marketing and their recall.In most cases, these are products that, due to their composition, are medicines but **have not been \"authorized or tested\" by the health authorities** as required by law. They often also hide their true composition from consumers.\n\nAlmost all of the medicines recently banned in Spain contain undeclared amounts of **sildenafil, sibutramine or tadalafil.** These are drugs administered under medical supervision to treat erectile dysfunction and obesity. The Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) considers that their uncontrolled use **can lead to \"serious health risks\"** as they are contraindicated for various types of patients and have not undergone regulatory controls.\n\n## A systemic failure\n\nSpanish law penalizes the “promotion, information or advertising of unauthorized medicines” and, therefore, these advertisements may be**illegal content for the purposes of the** European Union Digital Services Act (DSA)**.** The regulation requires all platforms mentioned in the study to implement **“effective risk mitigation measures”** specifically to prevent **“the dissemination of illegal content through their services.”**\n\nIn this case, we are talking about a risk mitigation strategy that would be quite simple to design, since the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) provides the necessary data to **prevent the dissemination of this type of illegal content in real time** and in a volume that is more than manageable for a large platform: an average of 10 products per year.\n\nFurthermore, in this case, the promotion of illegal content does not only occur within the platform but actually empowered by its advertising system: **commercial communications are subject to more regulation** and should undergo greater quality control than other messages, also taking into account that they represent an**economic benefit for the platform itself** , which is the one that charges money for ad placement.\n\n## Not only in Spain\n\nFacebook, Instagram, Google and TikTok not only ignore the law and the warnings of health authorities in Spain. A recent investigation**from** Reset.tech (an organization from which Fundación Maldita.es receives support) found ads on Facebook and Google that they were **promoting potentially dangerous dietary supplements**. Health authorities in various European Union member states have already declared one in five of these products illegal or dangerous.\n\nNor is the volume a minor issue. Reset.tech's research found more than **350,000 ads on Facebook and 2,000 on Google** between 2023 and 2026. On the search engine alone, the ads appeared up to **8 million times.**\n\n\n\n\n\n",
  "title": "45% of Medicines Banned in Spain Still Run Ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google and TikTok"
}