In an ironic twist, non-government alcohol and drug rehabilitation centres are not allowed to use Google Ads in Australia.
A Sydney-based addiction treatment facility was alarmed to discover that Google Ads does not allow drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres to use its services in Australia, even though no such rules apply to alcohol delivery services.
Non-profit rehab The Sydney Retreat said it had been using Google Ads to reach potential customers uneventfully for around 12 months, only to be informed of the ban in March.
While it appears that the ban itself is not new – it’s unclear how the facility was allowed to advertise in the first place – it has not been widely reported on in Australia.
“When someone decides that they want to stop drinking … there’s a small window of opportunity that opens,” The Sydney Retreat CEO John Malone told The Medical Republic.
“And if they Google ‘rehab’ and if your name comes up, they’ll call you … and often they’re in within a couple of days.
“But if they haven’t found a place that they can afford – because it’s the other thing, [being a non-profit] we are affordable compared to most pre private rehabs – or … haven’t made a decision to go to recovery centre within a couple of days, what happens is that they have another drink, they tell themselves that you know they’re overreacting … and things are not really that bad, and they change their mind.”
Mr Malone said he was disappointed by the fact that Google Ads allowed home alcohol delivery services to use its platform and that he knew of clients who had put off checking into a treatment facility because they had credit with an alcohol delivery service.
Dr Hester Wilson, a Sydney GP specialising in addiction treatment, told TMR that alcohol delivery services had become a major issue for her patients.
“For some of my patients [these services] just destroy them,” she said.
“Every time they’ll trying really hard not to drink and then they have a moment, and [it] is so easy, and they can get [alcohol delivery] to come at two o’clock in the morning.
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“It’s just heartbreaking … they make it so easy for [people] to access alcohol, but it’s so hard for [them] to access treatment.”
In the US and Canada, Google Ads permits recovery-oriented drug and alcohol services to advertise if they apply for certification through a third-party, for-profit company.
This is not available in Australia.
There do not appear to be TGA restrictions against advertising a private rehab clinic; the laws around advertising primarily relate to the promotion of prescription-only medicine, not health services.
Government-funded addiction treatment services are allowed to use Google Ads to advertise, but both Mr Malone and Dr Wilson acknowledged that public services tended to have longer wait lists than private facilities.
“The reality is that there’s so much information out there on the web, you can’t protect people by not allowing people to advertise,” Dr Wilson said.
“What you need to do is give people the skills and information so that they can make informed decisions.
“A GP is a good place to go to have that conversation.”
