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More dangerous than heroin”: the rise of the black-market “skinny jab” and why it’s alarming Britain
A new black-market trade in so-called “skinny jabs” — unlicensed weight-loss injections sold through salons, social media and shadowy online sellers — is prompting urgent warnings from health experts and regulators, and raising uncomfortable questions about how a public-health risk can outpace the harms posed by traditional drug trafficking. “More dangerous than heroin,” read an ITV investigation this week after reporting linked deaths and serious hospitalisations to counterfeit slimming injections arriving in the UK.
A booming black market for slimming drugs
What people commonly call “skinny jabs” are drugs from the GLP-1 family (the class that includes semaglutide products such as Wegovy and Ozempic) that were developed to treat diabetes and — under medical supervision — to help people with obesity lose weight. Demand has soared in recent years as prescriptions and public interest grew, and commercial shortages and long waiting lists for proper clinical assessment have created an opening for illicit sellers. Traders exploiting that demand are supplying pre-filled pens, vials and injections of uncertain provenance — sometimes genuine drugs diverted from legitimate supply chains, often counterfeit products that may contain the wrong active ingredient, the wrong dose, or no active drug at all. Regulators have repeatedly warned the public not to buy prescription medicines outside licensed channels.
Real harms: deaths, hospitalisations and contamination
The human cost of this market has already been documented. Families and clinicians have linked at least one death in the UK to an illegally administered slimming injection, and there have been multiple cases of severe illness requiring intensive care after patients used products bought from salons or online sellers. Symptoms reported include violent vomiting, dehydration, complications from improper dosing, and suspected infections from unsterile administration. Medical bodies and local health leaders are publicly urging people to avoid unregulated injections and to seek licensed care.
Why some say “more dangerous than heroin”
The headline comparison with heroin is striking, but proponents of the phrase argue it is not rhetorical. Their points are:
• Accessibility and reach. Skinny jabs are being marketed overtly on social media and are available through high-street beauty salons and informal clinics — making them easy to obtain for a wide, often vulnerable, audience who may not realise the risks. This differs from heroin distribution, which generally operates through criminal networks and often requires a point of contact.
• Novel, unpredictable risks. Counterfeit or improperly stored injectables can cause immediate, life-threatening reactions (wrong dose, contamination, bacterial infection). Heroin’s harms are well-known and, for the many affected, chronic; the risk profile of fake injectable products can be acute and medically baffling.
• Regulatory blind spots. Prescription-only medicines sold outside healthcare settings fall into a regulatory grey area that can be exploited quickly; enforcement and public-health messaging have struggled to keep pace with rapidly evolving online marketplaces. The MHRA has repeatedly warned the public that buying weight-loss medicines without a prescription is illegal and dangerous.
Those factors explain why reporters and some clinicians are using dramatic language. But it is important to be precise: the comparison is not about which substance is intrinsically more harmful per dose — heroin has devastating addiction and overdose potential — but about the type of harm, the speed with which the skinny-jab market has proliferated, and the different populations exposed to immediate, sometimes lethal, risks.
Heroin trafficking remains a major organised-crime problem
Facts matter when we compare risks. Law-enforcement bodies report large seizures of heroin and other Class A drugs each year, and heroin trafficking continues to fund organised crime and drive addiction and long-term harm across communities. The Home Office and Border Force figures show record-high numbers of seized drugs in recent years, and agencies such as the National Crime Agency continue to target major consignments and networks. That work saves lives and disrupts criminal enterprise, and the scale of heroin supply and addiction in the UK continues to be a serious public-policy challenge.
What needs to happen next
Public-health experts, regulators and police are increasingly calling for a multi-pronged response:
• Stronger enforcement of illegal online sales and fast action to remove advertisements and accounts promoting unlicensed injections.
• Greater public education so people understand the red flags (cash payments, vials instead of pre-filled pens, sellers who won’t show prescriptions or storage information).
• Better clinical access for patients eligible for licensed weight-loss treatments, reducing the market incentive to seek drugs through illicit channels.
• Cross-agency policing that treats counterfeit medical products as both a criminal and health priority, partnering regulators, Border Force and local health services to trace supply chains.
Bottom line
The skinny-jab scandal is a cautionary tale about how quickly a public-health problem can emerge when demand outstrips regulated supply, and how new forms of illegal commerce can put a different slice of the population at immediate risk. While heroin trafficking remains a grave and complex threat that fuels organised crime and long-term addiction, the rise of counterfeit weight-loss injections shows that danger can also wear a different face: one that arrives in a salon, in a social-media DM, or through a doorstep seller — lethal not because of an age-old stigma but because of contamination, bad dosing and the absence of medical oversight. That combination is what has prompted doctors, families and regulators to sound the alarm.
Attached is a news article regarding skinny jab that is more dangerous then herion
Article written and configured Christopher Stanley
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