The Underground Peptide Market Is Getting Ready to Go Mainstream

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Madison Muller** (0:09)
Essentially, if you have a health concern or problem, whether that's a physical problem or a cosmetic or aesthetic one, there is probably a peptide for that.

**Sarah Holder** (0:18)
That's Madison Muller, who covers the pharmaceutical industry for Bloomberg. Recently, she's been hearing a lot about a specific kind of drug, peptides.
I've been hearing a lot about them too. They seem to be everywhere.

**Kristi Turner** (0:34)
Now to the injectable peptides craze sweeping social media.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:37)
If you're in your 30s and you're not incorporating peptides into your skincare routine, why not?

**Sarah Holder** (0:42)
At the most basic level, peptides are chains of amino acids that bind to receptors in the body to turn processes on and off. Peptides are used in lots of different drugs, and they promise all kinds of transformative benefits.

**Amanda Mull** (0:57)
They will make you theoretically tan, beautiful, snatched, pain-free, well-rested.

**Sarah Holder** (1:04)
That's Amanda Mull, a senior reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. She says some of the most popular peptide-based drugs are ones you probably recognize, like GLP-1s for weight loss and insulin.

**Amanda Mull** (1:17)
Some of those substances that we're talking about are extremely well researched, extremely widely used, safe, effective, and they come from pharmaceutical companies that have large, well-inspected facilities for producing peptide drugs in large quantities.

**Sarah Holder** (1:33)
But there are a lot of other peptide-based injectables that are largely unregulated.

**Amanda Mull** (1:38)
There's a lot of substances that have not been trialed extensively in humans or hardly at all in humans for some of them.
They do not come generally from large pharmaceutical companies in the US. They are imported sort of as research materials. The sale of them is generally illegal for human use.

**Sarah Holder** (1:59)
But Amanda says, right now, the underground peptide trade is booming.

**Amanda Mull** (2:04)
You could buy some in a minute or two if you got out your credit card right now.

**Sarah Holder** (2:10)
Already, investors estimate that this peptide black market is worth $1 to $3 billion. But it might not be a black market for long, because the US. Secretary of Health and Human Services is himself a peptide enthusiast.

**Robert F. Kennedy Jr.** (2:26)
I mean, I'm a big fan of peptides. I've used them myself and used them with really good effect.

**Sarah Holder** (2:32)
That's Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Joe Rogan's podcast in the summer of 2023 Kennedy has been pushing the FDA to take a closer look at the drugs, in part because he says he wants to divert demand away from what he's called a dangerous black market.
That could potentially pave the way for state-regulated compounding pharmacies to make some peptides legally.

**Amanda Mull** (2:55)
If all of these things get put into legal compounding in the US, that probably expands a lot of people's risk tolerance and willingness to try them because they're coming from a certified facility, they're traceable, they're just brings it out of the shadows a little bit.

**Sarah Holder** (3:15)
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, Inside the Billion Dollar Peptide Craze, how the drugs moved into the mainstream, and what regulation would mean for telehealth companies, big pharma and the alternative wellness industry.
What's the origin story for these drugs that use peptides?

**Madison Muller** (3:42)
Well, peptides have actually been around for a long time. They sort of became popular on the fringes of the fitness and the bodybuilding community. And over time, they've sort of seeped into more of the mainstream culture.

**Amanda Mull** (3:54)
If you are looking for an inflection point, it is probably 2021, 2022, when people beyond the type 2 diabetes patient community started to become aware that Ozempic and then Mujaro were really great for weight loss. That started to become something that people wrote about in culture magazines and on blogs and on Reddit. So people started to look for options to receive these drugs.

**Madison Muller** (4:23)
People were seeking out GLP-1 drugs from compound pharmacies or medical spas. And once they got comfortable sort of taking a medication that was not necessarily a branded pharmaceutical product, some of these med spas, some of these doctors started recommending other things. So let's try BPC-157 or let's try GHK-CU. All of these sort of sound like alphabet soup of various letters and numbers and things. But people got comfortable with the idea one of injecting themselves with something because of the GLP-1s and then also taking something that didn't come from a brand name pharmaceutical company.
And we're also seeing right now, I mean, a lot of people who are big personalities, podcasters, biohackers sort of talking about various like experimentation that they're doing with their own health. I mean, we have people like Brian Johnson that have a lot of followers, have gotten a lot of attention. Joe Rogan's talked about peptides on his podcast. And so that's again sort of thrust them into like the mainstream culture more. And people just being more willing to sort of get health care from outside of the traditional health care system, outside of what doctors are prescribing them, and sort of taking it into their own hands sometimes in an extreme way.