Parents have enough to worry about when their children go online and are exposed to material created for adults. An unapproved injectable weight-loss drug shouldn’t be one of them. Unfortunately, and increasingly, that’s exactly what families are confronting.
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Across TikTok and other online forums, teenagers are talking openly about using retatrutide, an experimental obesity drug that is still undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials. Children as young as 13 have discussed taking it. Teenagers post before-and-after videos, trade advice about dosing and side effects, and ask strangers where they can buy it. Some even discuss how to hide their use from their parents.
For Utah families, the issue should be particularly concerning. More than one in four Utahns is under 18 years old. We have a marketplace that uses and abuses social media to put dangerous and unapproved injectable drugs within reach of teenagers. This situation isn’t an abstract regulatory problem. It’s a family safety issue.
This isn’t an FDA-approved medicine being misused by a handful of teenagers. Retatrutide is illegal to sell to patients as it has not been approved.
Unfortunately, products like Retatrutide are readily available online, promoted through social media and shipped directly to consumers. Some sellers and affiliate marketers provide dangerous instructions showing “customers” how to mix raw powder and inject themselves. There can be very little meaningful age verification standing between a teenager with a debit card and an experimental injectable drug.
That is especially troubling for adolescents, whose bodies are still developing. Retatrutide hasn’t been approved for adults, much less children.
An experimental injectable drug that cannot legally be sold should never be only a few clicks away from their families and children.
Teenagers experimenting with it aren’t under the supervision of physicians. Instead, they’re taking advice from influencers and anonymous online commenters, including people who profit when they make a sale.
There is another reason for concern: “Consumers” buying these products online cannot know with confidence what is actually in the vial or where it came from.
Federal enforcement actions and shipping records have documented Retatrutide entering the United States from overseas suppliers, including China. In one recent operation, Customs and Border Protection’s Cincinnati field office intercepted a scheme involving roughly 5,000 individual peptide shipments from China, including Retatrutide. Some shipments have reportedly entered the country labeled as entirely different substances.
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FDA itself has documented serious supply-chain concerns. In one enforcement action, investigators found an American distributor destroying original labels during receipt of retatrutide, potentially obscuring information about where the product originated.
This sounds like a problem requiring Washington to write another law. Well, it isn’t.
Federal law is already clear. Retatrutide is an unapproved new drug. There is no FDA-approved product for a doctor to prescribe, and the FDA has explicitly stated that retatrutide cannot legally be used in drug compounding. Labeling a vial “research use only” doesn’t create a loophole when it is marketed for human use.
Federal authorities know the market exists. FDA has issued warning letters, and Customs and Border Protection has intercepted shipments. Those efforts are important, but the continued availability of retatrutide demonstrates there must be more done.
Parents shouldn’t have to discover this problem by finding a vial in a family’s refrigerator or reading a warning from another parent online. Teenagers shouldn’t be getting medical advice about an experimental injectable drug from anonymous strangers or social media influencers earning commissions on sales.
Fortunately, federal officials already have tools to address the problem. Leaders at HHS, including Utah’s own Chris Klomp, are well positioned to help coordinate a much stronger response involving the FDA, Customs and Border Protection, and federal law enforcement to disrupt illegal imports and distribution and hold unlawful sellers accountable.
Retatrutide may ultimately prove to be an important new treatment. That’s what clinical trials and FDA review are designed to determine.
Until then, Utah families — and families across America — should be able to expect stepped-up control of these unapproved drugs for adults, let alone teenagers and children, by their government. An experimental injectable drug that cannot legally be sold should never be only a few clicks away from their families and children.
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