Pamela Fraher has spent months investigating products and practices used within Ireland's beauty industry. On Monday night, she examines the black market supply chain related to weight loss drugs and products.
Earlier this year, RTÉ Investigates exposed the widespread sale and injecting of botulinum toxin, commonly known as Botox, by unqualified individuals often using unlicensed products.
In a text exchange during our research for that investigation, a prospective supplier threw in an interesting aside. "We have Ozempic coming in too," he said.
After that documentary aired, I began to delve deeper into the sale and supply of weight loss drugs and medications. I soon found a booming black market in Ireland, thriving on social media.
It was not long before I was being swamped with adverts with thumping dance music blaring in the background, and text like "drop a dress size for Christmas" or "get party season ready."
There is nothing new about adverts promoting weight loss and linking it to specific events or seasons. Yet instead of a gym membership or a specific diet being promoted, these ads were for powerful prescription only weight loss medication. 'Skinny pens' or 'skinny jabs’, as the sellers called them - we decided it was worth trying to find out more.
'It's just like taking paracetamol'
One of the first sellers we came across was based in Tallaght in Co Dublin. She advertises not only on her personal Facebook account but also prolifically across the various buy and sell pages in Dublin, Carlow, Wexford, Wicklow, Athlone, Meath and Louth.
Our undercover colleague messaged her, and she responded immediately, "I have saxenda injection pens. Same as Ozempic... One pen last 18 days. Der €100," she wrote,.
The two agreed to meet in a Dublin shopping centre for the purchase. It would be one of many we filmed over several months.
While the seller initially queried why a "tiny" woman like our colleague would be interested in purchasing this type of medication, those misgivings were quickly forgotten.
During the exchange, the seller explained that she buys the pens outside the European Union. When our colleague asked about possible side effects from using the medication, she was told "it’s just like taking paracetamol. They're very safe."
We showed footage of the meeting to Kathy Maher, former President of the Irish Pharmacy Union.
"We have to remember she’s [the seller] not a pharmacist. She’s not qualified to discuss medicines. We know the safety profile with Saxenda, but it must be used under medical supervision," Ms Maher said.
"These medications are safe in high, high risk people," says Donal O’Shea about weight loss drugs generally, including Saxenda. He says they are prescription only for good reason.
"They have side effects and those side effects are nausea, vomiting, [but] you can get inflammation of your pancreas, pancreatitis. I've had two patients end up in intensive care based on kidney failure after starting these treatments," he said.
‘That's my work... I get a wage and I get to travel.’
Having seen the footage of the exchange, I became curious about the seller’s reference to getting the products from "outside the EU," and the fact the pens had Turkish writing on the labels.
Our colleague got back in touch with the seller and told her she had a family member who wanted to sell ‘skinny pens’ through her own beauty salon.
Over the phone, the seller told me all about how she flies to Turkey to purchase the injectable pens. We later observed her at Dublin Airport boarding a flight to Antalya, Turkey.
On the day she returned a week later, she immediately started placing adverts for her weight loss pens on social media.
When another colleague - posing as my business partner - arranged a face-to-face meeting, the seller explained she brings back 30-35 pens on each trip and that she's done this about eight times.
Watch: RTÉ Investigates: Botox and Beauty at Any Cost
Saxenda injectable weight loss pens can be purchased in pharmacies in Antalya for approximately €40. But this Dublin woman sells them for €100-€120 per pen, netting her a decent profit per unit.
That profit is not without its risks though, something the seller is very much aware of.
"Next month I'm going to go back again. The only issue when you come back here is customs [at Dublin Airport]. So, I'm taking a risk doing it," she told us.
The risk is something I was curious about too; how do you pass through an airport multiple times a year with a suitcase packed with prescription-only medication and go undetected?"I actually have a prescription just in case, just to say ‘Look, I was on it.’ I can say they’re [for] personal use and how are they going to prove they're not?" she said.
"That's my work, I get a wage, and I get to travel, that's kind of ultimately what I'm doing at the minute," the seller added.
My experience with this seller was just one of several similar encounters during a six-month investigation.
Time and time again we came across people willing to illegally sell weight loss products to customers without prescriptions, fueled by a culture that obesity expert Dr Kate McCann refers to as a "perfect storm".
"We've got a celebrity toxic beauty culture selling it as skinny jabs, as if this is a beauty product rather than a medicinal product," she told me.
"I feel that this fails patients. She sees them as clients in a job. Obesity is a complex, chronic, progressive, recurring disease. Drugs from Turkey aren't even close to addressing that."
Watch ‘RTÉ Investigates: Black Market Weight Loss’ from Pamela Fraher and Philip Gallagher on RTÉ One television at 9.35pm on Monday.
