Published June 2026; reviewed 10 July 2026.
The regulators issued a further joint warning on prescription-only weight-loss medicine advertising on 18 June 2026, building on their September 2025 enforcement notice, capping a year in which the MHRA dismantled the UK’s first illicit weight-loss-injection factory (Northampton, October 2025), further seizures followed in the East Midlands, and the MHRA seized almost twenty million doses of illegal medicines of all kinds (worth nearly £45m) across 2025, among them more than 5,000 illegal weight-loss products. More than 1,200 social posts were removed, and weight-loss advertising accounted for 17% of GPhC concerns over two years.
The rules, restated plainly
- POMs, including all GLP-1 medicines, cannot be advertised to the public. A “weight-loss injections from £99” post is unlawful whether or not it names a brand.
- Online prescribing requires independent verification of key measurements (GPhC, Feb 2025), so the ‘quick questionnaire’ model is dead.
- Sourcing outside licensed wholesale chains risks counterfeit stock and career-ending consequences.
Our GLP-1 course exists precisely to build the version of this service that thrives under scrutiny.