Report Calls on TikTok to Shut Down Unregulated GLP-1 Gray Market
核心洞察
A report from UltraViolet (搜索) found a widespread GLP-1 (搜索) gray market thriving unchecked on TikTok (搜索), with unauthorized vendors promoting and selling off-market, unregulated GLP-1 drugs at scale.
The platform is not only hosting this content but actively helping users find it, with women disproportionately targeted by these illicit sales.
People who fall into the GLP-1 (搜索) gray market face serious health complications, financial scams, and other harms.
A recent report from UltraViolet (搜索) has documented a serious and widespread GLP-1 (搜索) gray market thriving unchecked on TikTok (搜索), raising significant public health and patient safety concerns. According to the report, unauthorized vendors are promoting and selling off-market, unregulated GLP-1 drugs at scale via the platform. The findings indicate that this content is not merely widespread and easy to find on TikTok — the platform is actually helping users locate it, with women disproportionately targeted.
The risks associated with this gray market are described as extremely real and extremely serious. People who fall into the GLP-1 (搜索) gray market face health complications, financial scams, and more, according to the report.
A Missed Opportunity After Ownership Change
The change in TikTok (搜索) ownership that occurred in January 2026 provided what the report describes as a natural opportunity to address these longstanding problems and protect users. However, UltraViolet (搜索)'s findings document that TikTok did not take that opportunity, and the challenges that existed before the ownership change persist after the transfer.
The report characterizes this inaction as especially ironic given that many of the accounts illegally selling these drugs are based in China, and the main catalyst of TikTok (搜索)'s sale was to mitigate national security and public health concerns posed to Americans by a Chinese company's ownership.
Demands for Immediate Action
Based on the report's findings, UltraViolet (搜索) and its partners are demanding that TikTok (搜索) implement several immediate changes to mitigate the GLP-1 (搜索) gray market and increase user protections. These include:
- Enforcing existing policies, which would include suspending and removing accounts promoting illicit GLP-1 sales.
- Disabling search suggestions and discover pages that surface violations of TikTok's policies, such as "Gray Market Peptide Pricing" or hashtags like "graymarketpeptides."
- Rolling back sections of the TikTok Community Guidelines update from September 2025 to retain the explicit prohibitions on black and gray markets and redirection to off-site locations and/or direct messaging.
- Providing full transparency on enforcement actions taken in response to user reports in the United States, comparable to what is done in the EU for the Digital Services Act.
- Expanding the Creator Code of Conduct to include specific and clear details about the prohibitions in their terms that relate to the marketing of illicit drugs.
The Human Cost of Inaction
The report emphasizes that the people buying illicit gray market drugs are rational actors trying to navigate medical, financial, and cultural systems that have failed them. TikTok (搜索)'s failure to enforce its Community Guidelines, the report argues, allows these gray market vendors to thrive.
Rather than implement basic measures to prevent this unregulated, possibly illegal market that puts desperate users' physical, emotional, and financial lives at risk, the report concludes that TikTok (搜索) is effectively choosing to promote and indirectly profit from it. The petition states plainly: "The time for TikTok to take action is now."