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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

In Germany you can buy it at a pharmacy, you generally can't obtain medicine at a normal store.

Direct consumer advertisement of drugs is also illegal in Germany. (I think there's only 3 or 4 countries on the planet where this isn't the case)

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On the other hand, at least in the cities there is a ton of pharmacies - sometimes even across the street form one another, and easily every few hundred meters along major routes. There are way too many. When I walk through downtown Nuremberg I walk past several of them, right on the main pedestrian-only street of the city. And they are all allowed to advertise in their shop windows. So that's some prime advertising space, right in the hard of the city. On my way to downtown, a twelve minute walk, I walk past four pharmacies if I take the route along the street (vs. the lake route, which is a park).

Also, they are allowed to advertise for things like cold medicine, when I still had a TV (log time ago, admittedly) I remember seeing lots and lots of such ads: "WICK MediNait cold medicinefor the night", list of ingredients: https://www.aponet.de/wissen/arzneimitteldatenbank/suchergeb... (active ingredients Paracetamol, doxylamine hydrogen succinate, ephedrine hemisulfate, Dextromethorphan hydrobromide-1-water)

> Direct consumer advertisement of drugs is also illegal in Germany.

Only for prescription drugs ("verschreibungspflichtig"), so no "ask your doctor if XYZ is right for you" bullshit.

Non-prescription drugs ("apothekenpflichtig") are heavily advertised in pharmacies, sometimes on billboards, and on TV. Most TV ads for drugs are running on ARD and ZDF [1] since that's what old people watch.

[1] Though only between 18:00 and 20:00, which is when the public broadcasters are allowed to air ads.

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