The Chinese authorities have issued a ban on advertisements for medicine that claim to combat drug-addiction, cure cancer and AIDS, and deal with sexual inabilities.

An official from the State Drug Administration said November 28 that these ads could misguide consumers and should not be allowed to be published.

Meanwhile, the administration has also prohibited ads on pharmaceutical products that are still in the experimental stage or have been officially banned from production, sale and use by national or provincial-level drug administrations.

In the first 10 months of this year, 156 pharmaceutical ads were banned from being advertised, while the administrations of these industries and commerce at different levels dealt with 468 kinds of medicine that were illegally advertised.

(People’s Daily 11/28/2000)