PoundsPunch Periodical 2025.03: The Gray Market for "Research Use Only" Weight Loss Drugs

Experimental Obesity Drugs Like Retatrutide Are Being Sold for "Research"—But Everyone Knows What’s Really Going On

Welcome to the March 2025 edition of PoundsPunch. This time, we’re not doing a quick hit list. Instead, we're shining a spotlight on one quietly growing—and very questionable—corner of the weight loss drug world: the gray area sale of experimental drugs labeled for “research use only.”

Let’s talk about retatrutide, cagrilintide, and other next-gen weight loss drugs that aren’t FDA-approved (yet), but are already circulating among people eager to drop pounds—and willing to blur the lines to get there.

What’s Happening

Here’s the rundown: websites like BioLongevity Labs, Core Peptides, and a handful of other semi-anonymous operations are selling peptides like retatrutide, cagrilintide, and amylin analogs under the classic legal smokescreen of “not for human consumption.” These drugs are tagged as “research use only (RUO)”, which technically means they’re intended for lab experiments.

BioLongevity Labs website shows their product "for research and development use only".

But let’s not kid ourselves: these aren’t going into petri dishes or mouse models.

They’re being shipped to regular folks, mixed with sterile water in a kitchen, and self-injected—often with dosing plans lifted from online forums. The entire process lives in a gray space between biohacking and backyard pharmacology.

Some buyers openly talk about their experiences on TikTok and Instagram, while others wrap themselves in vague terms like “test subject” to keep plausible deniability.

Posts on Reddit Sharing Experience of Using Retatrutide

It’s the same hustle we saw with compounded semaglutide—just riskier, sketchier, and flying way lower under the radar.

What Are These Drugs, Exactly?

Let’s break down what people are actually injecting:

• Retatrutide, developed by Eli Lilly, is a triple agonist that hits GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon receptors. In early trials, it delivered more weight loss than tirzepatide, and with better glucose control. Lilly’s clinical trials are ongoing, but online sellers are already marketing it like it’s the next Ozempic.

• Cagrilintide, developed by Novo Nordisk, is an analog of amylin, a hormone co-secreted with insulin that slows gastric emptying and promotes satiety. It’s being tested in combination with semaglutide and shows enhanced weight loss when paired with GLP-1s.

• Other amylin-based peptides, also being investigated by Novo Nordisk and smaller biotech firms, are gaining traction as the next evolution of obesity pharmacotherapy, offering potentially stronger appetite suppression than GLP-1s alone.

All of this sounds exciting—because it is. But none of these drugs are approved yet. Which means they haven’t gone through the full safety gauntlet. There’s no quality control, no confirmed purity, no pharmacist, and no physician.

It’s just you, your peptide, and a syringe you bought online.

How Is This Legal (Or Just Not Illegal Enough)?

The loophole is the label: “For Research Use Only. Not for Human Consumption.”

That phrase is the fig leaf that lets these vendors operate in the open. As long as they don’t explicitly say the drugs are meant to be injected by humans, and the buyers click through a few disclaimers, they avoid triggering FDA enforcement.

It’s not that the FDA doesn’t care—it’s that enforcement is difficult. RUO products fall outside the usual drug approval channels. Unless a vendor crosses a line (say, by advertising clinical benefits or offering medical guidance), they live in a legal gray zone.

It’s a familiar story: the law hasn’t caught up to the market. And meanwhile, real people are injecting drugs with no oversight, no backup, and no recourse if something goes wrong.

What Needs to Happen Next

This problem isn’t going away, and honestly—it’s only going to grow. The demand is there. The supply is expanding. And enforcement? Still lagging.

What we need is:

1. Lower pricing across the board—whether it’s current GLP-1s like Wegovy and Zepbound, or next-gen drugs like retatrutide and cagrilintide, these medications need to be far more affordable. The current $1,000+ monthly price tags are out of reach for most Americans, and they’re fueling the rise of gray market alternatives.

2. Stronger FDA guardrails around peptide distribution, particularly for high-demand obesity drugs in the RUO category.

3. More aggressive monitoring of online sellers and enforcement actions when they cross the line.

4. Public education—including from influencers, journalists, and yes, us—about what these drugs are, what they aren’t, and why “biohacking” them can be dangerous.

Until then, people will keep rolling the dice with research peptides.