ABC Australia Bought Unapproved Peptides to Test the Social Media Trade

[sheilarae74]

To show how simple it is to buy unregulated peptides, the ABC set up a deal



None of these injectables are approved for use in Australia, yet they are advertised all over social media.

www.abc.net.au

Peptides sold illegally via Facebook marketplace or posted through Australia Post

​#-face-with-rolling-eyesface-with-rolling-eyesface-with-rolling-eyes

 

[Chili777]

They really bent over backwards to parrot the Pharma line here. Yikes.

 

[jailbird]

Chili777 said:

They really bent over backwards to parrot the Pharma line here. Yikes.

The liver failure bit was an odd one to throw in. You'd expect Pharma to push them to spell out that the cause was the illegal supply, not the drug itself.

 

[Skidude]

jailbird said:

Chili777 said:

They really bent over backwards to parrot the Pharma line here. Yikes.

The liver failure bit was an odd one to throw in. You'd expect Pharma to push them to spell out that the cause was the illegal supply, not the drug itself.

They got into it more further down, and said some of the Reta came back at 190% of labeled mass.

They said the liver problems came down to sterility/endos

 

[lastresort]

sheilarae74 said:

View attachment 52



To show how simple it is to buy unregulated peptides, the ABC set up a deal



None of these injectables are approved for use in Australia, yet they are advertised all over social media.

View attachment 53


www.abc.net.au

Peptides sold illegally via Facebook marketplace or posted through Australia Post

​#-face-with-rolling-eyesface-with-rolling-eyesface-with-rolling-eyes

Honestly, credit where it's due for the effort - it way better than the FOX news coverage in the US banging on about "European" peptides swamping the country. Remember Kay Ives' interview?

Also, FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE!!! Of all the places to buy ANY medicine.

 

[lessthanhalf]

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

 

[bluewater]

That ABC piece struck me as very shallow and biased, and the woman in the test lab struck me as very naive. She claimed GHK-CU had heavy metal contamination, counting free Copper as a heavy metal. I didn't quite follow the logic there, because if it really carried say 7% free copper, then presumably it would come out at 93% purity or less.

 

[JohannesSweden77]

bluewater said:

That ABC piece struck me as very shallow and biased, and the woman in the test lab struck me as very naive. She claimed GHK-CU had heavy metal contamination, counting free Copper as a heavy metal. I didn't quite follow the logic there, because if it really carried say 7% free copper, then presumably it would come out at 93% purity or less.

The (fake) news where I live pulled the same trick, except they went one further and called it fake as well as dangerous. They ordered "Dangerous fake glp1 medicine" and had it tested. I laughed when the piece ended up admitting the medicine they bought was neither fake nor dangerous however....

 

[lastresort]

lessthanhalf said:

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

Between months of digging around the peptide scene and years spent lurking in steroid communities, what I picked up is that a wobbly but fairly consistent code of honour runs between vendors and their customers, steroid circles especially.

This is a very very narrow niche, which people seem to forget often. We knowingly spend on substances the government is unable to shield us from, precisely because approval has not happened (yet). And where approval does exist (semaglutide/tirzepatide), stepping outside the normal routes means we waive those protections ourselves. I get why people do it ,but that is how it is. Once money changes hands, proving purity lands on the buyer rather than the seller, which is exactly why outfits like Janosik flourish.

Vendors also want to stay in good graces, and they will honour their word...until the day they stop caring.

 

[5byfive]

lessthanhalf said:

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

Completely agree. The peptide market is enormous; the crowd here and in similar groups makes up a small fraction of it. I've said this before, what we run into is not representative of the average peptide buyer. It is easy to dismiss tales of scam vendors and fake peptides as fear mongering, but for most of the buying public luck is doing most of the work. There are a lot of people getting mystery vials with who knows what off of Facebook Marketplace and Tik-Tok. If that were not the case, the ads would not be flooding everywhere. Broadly speaking, ordering peptides online is not safe. We are the exception, not the rule.

 

[lastresort]

5byfive said:

lessthanhalf said:

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

Completely agree. The peptide market is enormous; the crowd here and in similar groups makes up a small fraction of it. I've said this before, what we run into is not representative of the average peptide buyer. It is easy to dismiss tales of scam vendors and fake peptides as fear mongering, but for most of the buying public luck is doing most of the work. There are a lot of people getting mystery vials with who knows what off of Facebook Marketplace and Tik-Tok. If that were not the case, the ads would not be flooding everywhere. Broadly speaking, ordering peptides online is not safe. We are the exception, not the rule.

Over on the reddit peptide subforums, half the threads are people asking why what they got is murky.

 

[TooGood76]

lastresort said:

lessthanhalf said:

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

Between months of digging around the peptide scene and years spent lurking in steroid communities, what I picked up is that a wobbly but fairly consistent code of honour runs between vendors and their customers, steroid circles especially.

This is a very very narrow niche, which people seem to forget often. We knowingly spend on substances the government is unable to shield us from, precisely because approval has not happened (yet). And where approval does exist (semaglutide/tirzepatide), stepping outside the normal routes means we waive those protections ourselves. I get why people do it ,but that is how it is. Once money changes hands, proving purity lands on the buyer rather than the seller, which is exactly why outfits like Janosik flourish.

Vendors also want to stay in good graces, and they will honour their word...until the day they stop caring.

Nobody can really know the numbers, but there have to be enormous numbers of people buying off tik tok and Facebook ads, where consistency and transparency are far worse than what we have here - and what we have here is still questionable.

Without the risk reward being so far in your favour nobody would bother, but being able to source medication for a tenth of what even the cheap compounders charge makes it worth learning how to navigate this world.

 

[lastresort]

TooGood76 said:

lastresort said:

lessthanhalf said:

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

Between months of digging around the peptide scene and years spent lurking in steroid communities, what I picked up is that a wobbly but fairly consistent code of honour runs between vendors and their customers, steroid circles especially.

This is a very very narrow niche, which people seem to forget often. We knowingly spend on substances the government is unable to shield us from, precisely because approval has not happened (yet). And where approval does exist (semaglutide/tirzepatide), stepping outside the normal routes means we waive those protections ourselves. I get why people do it ,but that is how it is. Once money changes hands, proving purity lands on the buyer rather than the seller, which is exactly why outfits like Janosik flourish.

Vendors also want to stay in good graces, and they will honour their word...until the day they stop caring.

Nobody can really know the numbers, but there have to be enormous numbers of people buying off tik tok and Facebook ads, where consistency and transparency are far worse than what we have here - and what we have here is still questionable.

Without the risk reward being so far in your favour nobody would bother, but being able to source medication for a tenth of what even the cheap compounders charge makes it worth learning how to navigate this world.

Callous or not, that's my take: buying any medicine or supplement off Tiktok/Facebook marketplace puts you well past the line of "error or judgment."

 

[Seasonal1]

lastresort said:

lessthanhalf said:

It does make me wonder whether this forum hands people a false sense of security about the peptide market as a whole. Scams, or vials that turn out empty or contaminated, do seem pretty rare around here, and that is a good thing. But this is a self-selected, fairly well educated crowd, and the obvious cowboys get pruned out by the processes in place, so the vendors themselves are being filtered to some degree.

My suspicion is that a random buy off facebook or tiktok carries a pretty high chance of a scam, or of substandard product. Even with the 95-99% success rates people here report, the real-world risk is probably quite a bit higher than it looks from inside this forum.

Between months of digging around the peptide scene and years spent lurking in steroid communities, what I picked up is that a wobbly but fairly consistent code of honour runs between vendors and their customers, steroid circles especially.

This is a very very narrow niche, which people seem to forget often. We knowingly spend on substances the government is unable to shield us from, precisely because approval has not happened (yet). And where approval does exist (semaglutide/tirzepatide), stepping outside the normal routes means we waive those protections ourselves. I get why people do it ,but that is how it is. Once money changes hands, proving purity lands on the buyer rather than the seller, which is exactly why outfits like Janosik flourish.

Vendors also want to stay in good graces, and they will honour their word...until the day they stop caring.

After what COVID showed us, I have no faith that my government cares one bit about protecting me. What they protect is big pharma, and the $$$.