To think weight-loss injections should be prescribed in person only. The scale of abuse must be shocking.

@spoonbillstretford hi there, over the last few months some of the posters on the August thread have been asked to go through a more rigorous process that involves a live a video with your pharmacy, photographic ID, and having to stand in a doorway with a tape measure to show your height, and if I recall correctly they had to show their weight on the scales also. No one has seemed to mind doing it because I guess if you have nothing to hide why would you bother about it. Oh and there’s something about the way it’s done that you can’t see them but they can see you. Or is it the opposite? I can’t remember.

Someone up thread has mentioned that an aesthetic nurse practitioner is using phials of peptides to inject clients. I have been targeted with these adverts for the phials, which are definitely dodgy. I think it's these that are the problem, not the legit pharmacies which now have stringent guidelines. When I've delved further into where these phials come from it's well dodgy, companies based in African countries and the like, the contents could well be a semaglutide used for research, equally it could be insulin or some other dangerous content.
This is the problem with ' nurse practitioners' turning rogue, making lots of money from stupid people, my husband's ex being one of them, she herself was bulimic and now is involved in the aesthetic bandwagon. Its this that should be more regulated.

In my experience it's photos with you holding up a piece of paper with that day's date on. Not infallible, but it's not a case of someone posting old photos from when they looked a bit fat on holiday five years ago. And most are requiring videos now.

Any private prescription or pharmacy medicine available online requiring a consultation requires honesty from the user, and quite rightly we have an individual responsibility when we provide that information. Sometimes the benefits of something being widely available outweigh the potential for harm when it falls into the wrong hands. Sometimes things get adjusted for good reason, like the amount of painkillers you can buy in one go.

I don't don't buy all the posters clutching their pearls and fanning themselves with faux concern about WLI when this site affects such fat phobes.

How did you get them if you don’t mind me asking? Did you lie to the pharmacy??

I agree they are life changing but the more non-eligible people do this, the harder it will be for those who are eligible to access them.

It’s people like your friend that make a legitimate drug for obese people even harder to access.

im on it and its life changing. I can see the temptation.

For the husband - his wife is clearly in the grip of an eating disorder. I’d be telling her GP and also contacting the pharmacy to say she is abusing it.

I do work within a minority community and abuse of these injections is rife. Women with a perfectly normal BMI use them to keep calorific intake very low, and anecdotally the young women have really high mortality rates and I've heard talk of them believing the injections being the cause.

But they are. All you have to do is get a friend who fits the criteria to buy in their name and hand them over to you. I know someone who's doing exactly that. She's also getting a prescription for herself from a second online pharmacy. There are no checks that show if someone is buying from more than one place - it's only if the GP is informed that it might be noticed.

I think YABU, it's not really for you to judge whether someone would benefit from a medication that's been prescribed to them.

I was gaining and gaining, went from BMI 21 to 26 and just couldn't stop eating and bingeing. I tried losing weight the usual way which had always worked for me in the past but wasn't working now I'm approaching my forties. I went on the jabs and it's been life changing. It would have been much worse for my health to deliberately push myself into obesity just to qualify the 'proper' way. I truly believe in the not too distant future they'll be available to normal sized people to manage appetite and weight, not just to obese people to lose weight. They're a fantastic tool and one I'm extremely thankful for.

I am about to start Mounjaro in August but although overweight, it is being prescribed by my GP for my diabetes to help control my levels rather than for weight loss reasons and I will have one of my medications swapped out for the injectable.
I have had to wait 2 years to get it as was previously on another one but NHS struggled to then get stocks of it due to everyone obtaining it privately and diabetics who were on it had their prescriptions stopped.
I will be regularly monitored while on it by my GP and it will be on NHS prescription and they will only be prescribing it to diabetics at my surgery not for those wanting to loose weight.

I don't think the OP is saying no one should have them. I really wish I could get mine from my GP. I would happily pay what I'm paying to a pharmacy for them (I'm now on 15mg so it's not cheap). At least if you have to go to your own GP there's no concealment opportunity of using a third party ID to get them, or of doctoring photos so you look bigger than you are.

I think it should be illegal for these to be sold by aestheticians, although it seems to be by word of mouth rather than advertising. They're drug dealers, nothing more and nothing less.

@Thisisdrugabuse

As a clinician do you think about the issues holistically around the prescribing of these medications? Because it doesn't sound like you have.

Requiring f2f prescribing is the obvious safeguard everyone jumps to, but it also creates significant barriers, the added logistics and cost burden risks excluding the very people who need the help the most.

Misuse is obviously a concern, but careful evidence based safeguards can be built around online prescribing without making it so restrictive it hurts genuine patients.

It is a tricky balance, of misuse vs under treatment and inequality. That is what the GPhC is trying to find and enforce.

Thinking f2f is the only answer is not considering the full complexity of the issue or the real life consequence to patients.

I have taken the WLJ but sadly I had a bad reaction. I ended up in A and E. I have gallbladder stones and I didn't know. You can't take the drugs with this condition.
I had been dieting for two years and had lost a significant amount of weight. I was on the list for wls as I started at BMI 43. My surgeon told me that I was no longer heavy enough for surgery and many people who went abroad for surgery were now using the drugs instead. They are safer so I agree with that. I've seen some nasty surgery in my profession.
When I started on the injections I had numerous friends ask how to get them. They're not obese. However I've also known very obese people be denied them as they don't meet the other criteria for the NHS.
We're rural so we don't have many glammy ladies. They spend their money on horses!
I have just been told a friend I booked for breakfast next week is no longer eating. That's bizzare to me. It will be interesting to see if she's on the jabs. I don't judge @Thisisdrugabuse but if you're worried about your friends say something. If they are addicted like a previous poster said you'd say something? I was alcohol dependant and a very good friend helped me give up. I always like the preface ' tell me to bog off but....'

Sigh... The risk of weight related issues is way higher than the risk of the jabs. I've taken them, i was slightly under the limit. They've been lifechanging. The risks are low - how about NOT making them harder to get, but adding compulsory information packs with supplement advice. Given how incredibly safe these medications are, I can't believe the negativity spewed about them. This medication is improving millions of people's lives instantly. Yes, you do save the cost of them in food as the takeaway, the impulse chocolate bar - none of that is appealing. A salad, with nice fresh healthy add ons IS appealing and much cheaper than the junk food. Instead of clamping down on people having this medication, let's focus on helping people use it well and take the right supplements. The pious anti-crowd are getting REALLY boring now.

The post I was responding to was saying 'what happens when you come off it and pile the weight back on' and my comment about it being none of her business was referring specifically to that. Not to people illegally prescribing drugs at all.

I'm on that study too. My GP called a couple of weeks ago asking what weight I was at and checking that all was well, asked about side effects etc. I can see from the NHS app that monthly letters are sent to my GP so they are fully in the picture.
The weekly check ins are a bit of a faff but I do feel reassured by them. The blood tests are an added bonus. I can see just how far I have come.

There are official pharmacies who accept a photo. Just because you haven’t used one doesn’t mean they dont exist.

Babycatface it is our business though as PP says. It may be seen as a wonder drug.but we have no idea of long term usage.Good old NHS to the rescue again.if it goes wrong.most diets fail as seen. Healthy eating is way to go .I am recovering from cancer atm .upping fruit and veg .I am not a doctor.but after gruelling chemo treatment it's beyond me how anyone could inject something unknown into their bodies.it needs to be accepted we are not all 1 shape of slim.if women were not seen as sex objects and as people we would not have this powerful diet industry. Women in other non western countries are accepted as more rounded esp after DC

I get mine via a clinical study, starting with a BMI of 53.3 (now down to 42.9). It's taken six months to be gradually moved up to 10mg, and my GP has been informed of every change in prescribing, along with any reported side effects, I have to do an on-camera weigh-in every week and I've got a blood test to do next week to monitor any changes since I first started. It seems a bit of a faff, but there's support from a clinician if I need it, and I do feel that safety is paramount.
I know people who are buying it from random sources, though none of those were already slim when they started. They all seem ok so far but there probably isn't much support with side effects etc if they do come to need it.

One of the things that leaps out about the subject is that it's a massive money-spinner for whoever's selling it. There's a long, long queue of people who would take it up on the NHS (myself included). Look at the pp talking about an aesthetician giving it to clients. That's a lot of cash for not much work.

In my area the NHS is not currently accepting patients to be considered for WLI. If, in a hypothetical future, we get full NHS provision for certain BMIs or whatever measures they use, then a paid second tier for those who want to lose a bit of weight, that second tier has to make up the cash they will lose from the NHS taking it on fully. Can only imagine that's going to mean more of a wild west for lower BMI users.

As pp have pointed out, it's pretty safe, but I wouldn't want to be an eating disorder sufferer using this. It makes is very easy to be anorexic, very.

I started taking it in February and there are already a lot more hoops to jump through to get it.

photos are quite specific from certain angles with various levels of undress. You also have to upload a photo on the scales with only your feet on them.

Yes if you tried hard enough you could definitely fake these, but at the point you know what you are doing is wrong and any consequences are entirely on you.

Is she actually getting it through a legitimate pharmacy?

I don't know the ins and outs.

Really? I would expect this to be the first question a concerned HCP would ask a friend.