Nurofen Found Guilty of Misleading Packaging

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The pharmaceutical company, Reckitt Benckiser, sells a range of pain relief products. Many of you will have heard of this product, Nurofen. Different packages are available which supposedly target specific conditions such as back pain, migraine pain, tension headaches. However the active ingredient in all these products is exactly the same, ibuprofen lysine 342mg. Consumers may pay double for these products but are purchasing the exact same product as is in Nurofen's general painkiller. The marketing trick was highlighted by the Australian Broadcasting Commission's TV The Checkout program in 2013. In 2010 Nurofen was awarded a Shonky Award by the consumer group Choice. Now, the company has admitted to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that it engaged in misleading conduct. The Federal Court of Australia has now ordered that these specific pain products must be removed from retail sale. Corrective notices must be posted in newspapers and on the website and legal costs of the ACCC must be met. Any penalties which may be determined by the court at a later date must also be paid. We bought Nurofen in Vienna where the assistant admitted that any of the Nurofen pain-relief products would give exactly the same result regardless of where our pain was. This is a good result for Australian consumers. I wonder if other countries will follow suit. Did you know this about Nurofen?