Studies Show Online Peptide Retailers Don’t Deliver What They Promise

Melanotan II products have been sold all over the internet to increase the skin’s ability to tan for quite some time now. This product, which works by increasing brown-black eumelanin synthesis, darkens the skin when exposed to sunlight. It has also been nicknamed the Barbie-drug as a possible side effect includes weight loss. The drug was however not approved by authorities and clinical trials have been put to an end after it was discovered that it also induces erections as a side effect. This led to its non-approval in most major countries, including USA, various European countries and Australia.
However, being unavailable on the legal market has not stopped Melanotan II from becoming a popular drug. It is sold on the illicit drug market in various countries and can be obtained over the internet or through dealers which can be found in various locations that pertain to the market, for instance tanning salons, gyms or beauty salons. A quick online search is probably the easiest way to find it though. This is exactly the route a research study took. The purpose of the study was to ascertain what the contents of the Melanotan II vials actually were. This is of some concern as the illicit drug market does not have to adhere to the same safety regulations that the legal drug market does. The findings of the study are somewhat disconcerting to say the least.

The study used a Google search to find three shops that claimed to sell vials containing 10mg of Melanotan II with secure online credit card payment and delivered to the UK. They obtained fifteen unmarked vials from the first store, Shop A. There were no extra accessories and one of the vials even had a dent in the metal seal. Shop B supplied six vials as well as accessories such as alcohol skin wipes, an unmarked vial of excipient and equipment for injecting. The vials from Shop B were also unmarked. Shop C supplied five “MT2 Melanotan Powder” marked vials as well as all the accessories Shop B had, with the vial of excipient marked as “bacteriostatic water”. Furthermore Shop C also included instructions for use and a “Items checked” sticker on the packaging.
As was explained in the article pertaining to the study the extra information and branding provided by Shop C is not necessarily a clear indicator of the quality of the product you are receiving as it could just be a marketing point to make the product look more legitimate. What needs to be kept in mind is that none of the products on the illicit drug market are forced to undergo quality control. In fact, you could purchase two vials from the same shop and find the contents vastly different. The store could change suppliers or use various suppliers for the same substance.

Back to the study though. The investigators then ordered three vials of Melanotan II reference standards to compare to the Melanotan II they ordered online. These vials were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich in Germany, Tocris Bioscience in the UK and Bachem in Switzerland. Everything was then taken to Denmark where the tests were done. They used liquid chromatography with ultra-violet detection with TFA as the mobile phase modifier in order to get the results.

First they tested the three vials they obtained from legal sources. All these contained exactly what they expected with no impurities. They then tested the 26 vials they obtained from the online stores. The results were somewhat disturbing to say the least. Shop A fared the worst out of the lot. Of the fifteen vials supplied under the pretext of containing 10mg of Melanotan II only two contained more than 5mg of Melanotan II (the highest having 5.12mg). The lowest recorder for this supplier was 4.70mg. Yes, they were ripping people off by an average of just over 50%. Not only this but they also had between 4.1% and 4.8% impurities in their samples. Shop B was not a whole lot better though. While the six vials from Shop B contained the highest amount of Melanotan II, between 6.06mg and 8.84mg with an average of 7.08mg and two vials containing 6.67mg, the samples also contained the highest percentage of impurities, between 4.6% and 5.9%. Incidentally the two vials that contained the 6.67mg of Melanotan II were the two that contained the highest and lowest % of impurities, proving the fact that these products didn’t undergo a very strict quality check, if any. Shop C fared the best comparatively. Of the five vials only one contained less than 5mg of Melanotan II (with 4.32mg). The highest content, 5.58mg, was found in two vials. What stood out about Shop C though is that all the vials only contained negligible amounts of impurities at less than 0.05%.



The data collected by this study, which was approved by the Danish Health and Medicines Authority, goes to show that you can’t always be sure of what you’re getting from the illicit drug trade. Although this study was only done with Melanotan II it would be ignorant to surmise that any other drugs found on the online market would have any better results. This being said one would also be ill-advised to go ahead and double dose just because the results have shown that the retailers supply vials that contain about 50% less mg than specified. Not only is there the odd chance that the vials may in fact contain the correct amount of substance, but there is also no telling what the impurities are that could very well be present in these substances. Furthermore, while the one shop that marked their product and supplied the most branding and information in this study did have the least impurities their marketing was still no clear indication that their products did in fact undergo a quality control of sorts. The five vials supplied by Shop C did not, after all, all contain the same amount of Melanotan II and none of the amounts were even close to that indicated on the label. In fact it would be interesting to know if the “bacteriostatic water” that they supplied was indeed bacteriostatic. If anything this study proved that you should always be careful when buying and using any products on the illicit drug market.