The Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) has a long history of safe dispensing of prescription medications. Since our founding in 2002, we have been dedicated to the “development of safety protocols and delivery processes that enable the equitable distribution of pharmaceutical products and services to patients throughout the world.”

Achieving this mission, our member companies have served millions of people who require daily medication for ongoing conditions and who are unable to access, afford, or trust medications close to where they live. We pioneered safe distance care, dispensing legally manufactured medications from licensed pharmacies and requiring a valid prescription from a patient’s healthcare provider.

Over time, we’ve observed an increasing level of risky, harmful activities emerging on the internet related to medications. In 2023, right here in CircleID, CIPA called for a ban of online sale of opioids as a way to reduce the risks associated with sale of controlled substances and narcotics that have a high potential of abuse and are often laced with fentanyl or other dangerous additives.

Today we’re making a similar call for the ban of online sales of unregulated peptides, which are not approved for human use, and dangerous to the point of potentially causing serious harm or even being life-threatening.

What exactly are peptides? They’re amino acids that naturally occur in the body and regulate processes like hormone production, digestion, and tissue repair. While your body produces them, many synthetic versions in injectable, freeze-dried powder, or pill form are being marketed online today for bodybuilding, sexual enhancement, fertility, and weight loss.

The danger is that these synthetic peptide products may interfere with the body’s normal biological processes and pose significant health risks. Concerns include contamination, inaccurate dosing, sterility issues, endocrine disruption, cardiovascular complications, hypoglycemia, injection-related infections, and adverse reactions that may go unnoticed without proper physician supervision, diagnostic evaluation or ongoing clinical monitoring.

Yet millions of people are now being lured to websites to purchase unregulated peptides. The websites often provide lab testing research results referencing performance in mice and rats…but not humans. Additionally, most of these websites declare their peptide sales ‘for research purposes only’ or ‘not for human use’ to avoid the reality that these drugs are not approved anywhere in the world. This raises serious concerns regarding patient safety, informed consent, product accountability, and the potential for misuse.

Additionally, the way in which peptides are often sold on these websites—without a prescription and available in large quantities beyond personal use—extends the risk even further by potentially making them available for distribution or resale to family, friends, neighbors, or more broadly to anybody who expresses interest.

Today, we shop for everything online. There’s no doubt online shopping is a huge part of our lives and brings great convenience and savings. It’s a fact of life that is growing rapidly, soon to leap by bounds as AI agents start to shop and buy on consumers’ behalf. Purchasing any medications or health-related products online requires extra diligence. All online medications providers should require a valid prescription from a physician and regular medical supervision to ensure effective treatment and identify any possible emerging risks or reactions. Appropriate medical oversight is essential when considering any therapy that may affect hormonal, metabolic, cardiovascular, or other complex physiological systems.

Anyone purchasing medications online must make sure that safety and privacy protocols are in place. A legitimate online pharmacy website displays a mailing or physical address, contact information and thorough terms of sale and use. Most importantly, they require a valid prescription from a patient’s medical provider, maintain a health profile with medication history to avoid adverse drug interactions, have a licensed pharmacist on staff to supervise medication dispensing and advise patients upon request, and have procedures in place to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality. They certainly wouldn’t be selling products such as peptides directly to consumers.

CIPA is proud of our longstanding history and 100% perfect safety record providing daily maintenance medications to consumers. Beyond our own customers, as licensed pharmacists and pharmacy operators, we are concerned with everyone’s health and safety when purchasing any medicines or health-related products online. This is why we called for online opioid sales to be banned, and why we now make the same urgent call for online peptide sales to be prohibited as well.