(AmericanProsperity.com) – Ozempic has become a very popular drug that has been linked to weight loss, but there has been a surge of scams for this medication due to its popularity. Research has warned that illegal pharmacies are selling faux Ozempic, or in some cases, they are selling a false advertisement and the person doesn’t receive anything in return.
Tim Mackey, a professor at the Global Health Program at the University of California in San Diego, said, “It’s hard to say how widespread these scams are.”
“It changes based on availability of raw materials, and there are different levels of counterfeiters,” he continued. Mackey and his colleagues searched for websites that were advertising semaglutide without the need of a prescription. They purchased six products for quality control testing, but they only received three of their orders.
“Three vendors selling Ozempic injections engaged in non delivery scams requesting extra payments to purportedly clear customs, confirmed as fraudulent by customs agencies,” the team put in their report.
Semaglutide overdoses have become a common occurrence, and United States poison centers have had over three thousand semaglutide calls from January to November of last year, which is fifteen times more than a few years prior.
The U.S Food and Drug Administration issued an alert just last week warning of semaglutide overdoses. Most of these reports were a result of people injecting more than the prescribed dose and in some cases twenty times more than the original dose.
As the counterfeit market continues to expand for Ozempic and other semaglutide medications, the illnesses and overdoses are expected to increase. Mackey stated that there are over thirty thousand active illegal online pharmacies that could potentially take advantage of the Ozempic popularity.
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