Black market WLIs

Prescribing in person won’t stop black market sales.

It will just make it more inconvenient and costly for those who buy legally.

Absolutely. Can you imagine the resource requirements to see 2 million people to prescribe in person. The size of the buildings, required, the infrastructure. The amount of prescribers. The hassle for people.

righr now you need to take pics. The issue is not legitimate drugs, it’s the black market.

what a crazy post the op made.

Righr you want to make it much more difficult for the many due to the few.

how very logical of you op.

@ToffeeCrabApple there are about 2 million people in the UK getting online prescriptions for WLI. The practical and cost implications of making all of us have monthly in person weight verification is substantial. Probably impossible for many pharmacies. The cost to the patient would soar and access would reduce, which would mean a huge number of people who are legitimately and responsibly using these medications would no longer be able to access them. That doesn’t seem proportionate to me.

This^

This is no different than getting a script directly from your gp and then selling it on for profit. It's nothing to do with the online pharmacies.

People know they're proper drugs. They also know there's money to be made in there.

She didn't fake anything to get a prescription.

She bought from the black market.

The controls you are suggesting would not stop that.

I do think weight/bmi should be verified in person. I know quite a lot of women who are very open that they've lied & successfully been prescribed them online. Old photos etc.

Yes, OP has entirely failed to address any of the definite downsides of this.

It always interests me how little thought is given to healthcare system capacity when people want to mess with existing systems. It's not just about pricing people out of private prescriptions either. As it was pointed out upthread, if you want to add more HCP/pharmacist scrutiny in the private sector, that doesn't just hatch out of an egg. I could, and would, still afford my WLIs even if I also had to cover the costs of regular, in person appointments. And I can pay more the NHS do. There's lots like me.

I have seen people on MN discuss people they know who have self diagnosed asthma and buy inhalers online. It’s not as widespread as the interest in WLI but there will be people who do these things.

As @IsItSnowing says, it would be very much more expensive to require a face to face in person appointment for each prescription. That would price many people out, and some will then move to the black market in non-legitimate medication that’s imported criminally into the UK.

I don’t think it would have the effect that you’re hoping for.

That’s why I would like to see them having more regulation around their prescription, so that there is a clearer understanding in the general population that these are proper medical drugs, not to be messed around with.

You've not explained how this greater regulation would achieve that.

Definitely not. In reality, the online pharmacy I use to buy mine knows far more about wli than my GP. They are very diligent with checks. As were the previous pharmacy I used.
My local pharmacy do offer this service at twice the price I'm paying. The wli are already expensive, this would just price more people out of the market. And would have no effect whatsoever on the situation in that article.

Of course not. I am not responsible for idiots buying medicines on the black market. They take their chances as far as I'm concerned. I also have no idea how in-person appointments would stop them.

But people do fake back pain to get painkillers or anxiety to get benzodiazepines. The kind of people who will go down the illegal route don’t care if something is a “proper medical drug” or not; they want it so they’ll do what they have to to get it.

It’s odd though, to start a thread on an article you didn’t read and tk think making it harder to get legitimate drugs will make black market drugs reduce. It’s as illogical as it gets.

You're not wrong @Safarisagoody - but the title isn't "make WLI easier to get legitimately because black-market drugs could be anything", the title is "I nearly died after buying skinny jab from friend of friend". The way things go, is that you see a headline on your phone and don't necessarily read the article - and for a particular type of person, it then informs their world view that WLIs are dangerous.

Edit: not to mention, the woman in the article is a size 8 with an eating disorder!

You are confusing two things here.

Scenario 1 - person goes to an online pharmacy to get weight loss injections, or HRT or whatever because it's easier than going to the GP or because they can get privately what the NHS or their GP won't prescribe. They meet the criteria. These drugs are not illegal. They are approved and the pharmacies are regulated. Many have processes in place to ask you to verify your weight, and will ask for permission to inform your GP. I have recently been through this with an online pharmacy for both HRT and Wegovy. This is not "black market".

Scenario 2 - person buys injections or drugs from their mate, or a bloke down the gym, or from TikTok. They have no idea what they are buying, except it's cheap. These places don't care about making sure it's clinically appropriate, or telling your GP. That sort of sourcing is black market and putting more barriers in place on legitimate businesses will do nothing to stop the black market.

Op did you not read the article. It’s illegal drugs people are obtaining and the bbc is saying it’s because it’s so hard to get the legit stuff, due to cost and the nhs not prescribing. They are advocating making it easier not harder to get the legit drugs.

That’s illogical. How would prescribing in person stop black market drugs. Prescribing on line or in person is the legal version. The black market will continue regardless. In fact if you forced in person, it would likely increase the black market as people have busy lives or don’t wish that level of intrusion.

I think online prescribing is great in general. It does include some drugs that can be dangerous (e.g. fungal nail treatment which requires regular liver tests) if people lie to get them. But the woman in the article wasn’t prescribed anything online. I think it would be more valuable to talk about the risks of buying drugs from random people, which is what the article is doing. To be honest, I think having to go to a GP can be a barrier for getting help with things like ED, so I think it should be easier to self refer online for that too

What happened here had nothing to do with online consultations.

I got mine through an online pharmacy but would have been happy to have in person appointments.

I'd no more buy heroin off the street than WLIs. Idiots the lot of them. And it pisses me off that a genuinely life changing medication is demonised because there are some people who do things like this and instead of the message being "don't buy drugs off the street" it becomes "WLI nearly killed me".

People have a lot of bright ideas, but none of them get round the fact that WLIs, easy foreign travel and the Internet all exist. Nor that we don't have the HCPs to watch people who are legitimately prescribed inject themselves with it, or not without them doing it instead of other things we need them to do anyway. As @MrsTerryPratchett points out.

Those factors in combination are what makes WLIs available to people who don't qualify. None of them are going away any time soon and they're not affected by changing the systems for people who qualify. Then obviously there's the fakes.

Unintended consequences. The staff earn on the weekend but have to take days in the week. They now earn enough privately that they can go part time. They have far fewer appointments to give out. Trying to get in to your GP gets more and more impossible.

Video calls are fair enough.

I think there should be either an in person consultation or at a bare minimum a video conference call. Lots of people on the site are bragging how they got wli’s with bmi’s under 25 from legitimate companies by lying about their height or weight. I’d personally like for GP’s to be allowed to run private weight loss consults on a Saturday, perhaps run by nurse practitioners, and then you get the prescription fulfilled by whoever you choose, ideally at least every 6 months you would need to return. I don’t think the nhs should pay but using the empty facilities on a weekend and allowing staff to earn overtime seems a good way forward