Fitness Influencers Found Selling Steroids and Peptides on Telegram

A Guardian investigation found fitness influencers using Telegram to sell anabolic steroids, prescription-only medicines and unregulated experimental peptides. Prof Channa Jayasena of Imperial College London said he encounters patients day in, day out who are taking experimental peptides.

He warned that steroids increase the risk of death threefold and that many peptides, made in China without standard quality controls, risk contamination from powerful solvents.

Jayasena said the situation amounts to lawlessness. “It feels that we’re in the wild west and it feels like we’ve rapidly arrived in a situation of lawlessness when it comes to people normalising the administration of potentially very powerful and sometimes untested peptides and products that could have devastating consequences for their health,” he said.

“People are buying this stuff and injecting it into their veins.

Susan Backhouse, a professor at Leeds Beckett University, said steroid use has spread beyond gym settings. Both men and women show growing body dissatisfaction, she said, and repeated exposure to before-and-after images on social media feeds creates normalisation. Access has become easy, she added, with products delivered within days after clicking influencer links.

Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat chair of the health select committee, said the committee is concerned that certain tech firms show little interest in protecting users and that the MHRA and other agencies lack resources. Conservative MP Luke Evans said he has repeatedly raised the issue of image and performance-enhancing drugs in parliament and that the online sphere makes the problem ten times worse.