“You can still just buy cheap compounded semaglutide.”
What the evidence shows
The wave of low-cost compounded GLP-1s existed largely because the branded drugs were in official shortage, which temporarily let pharmacies and outsourcing facilities make copies. Those shortages are over — the FDA declared the tirzepatide shortage resolved in December 2024 and the semaglutide shortage resolved in February 2025 — and the legal room to mass-compound wound down through 2025. In 2026 the FDA went further, proposing to exclude semaglutide, tirzepatide, and liraglutide from the 503B "bulks list," finding no clinical need for outsourcing facilities to compound them in bulk, and issuing warning letters to facilities still doing so. Throughout, the FDA has repeatedly warned that unapproved and counterfeit GLP-1 products are circulating, and has documented hundreds of adverse-event reports and serious dosing errors — some requiring hospitalization — tied to compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide. Narrow, patient-specific compounding can still be legitimate in defined circumstances, but the broad "cheap semaglutide for everyone" pipeline is closing.
What we still don’t know
Some of this is still in motion: the 503B proposal went through a public comment period and isn't finalized, and how aggressively enforcement plays out is uncertain. Because the grey market isn't systematically monitored, no one can quantify how much of what's sold as cheap "semaglutide" is mislabeled, under- or over-concentrated, or outright counterfeit — which is precisely the problem for any individual vial.
Why the claim misleads
"You can still just buy it" treats a closing legal window as a permanent, normal option. As the shortage-era allowance disappears, more of what's marketed as cheap, no-prescription "semaglutide" is unapproved product with no verified identity, purity, or dose, and no clinician or regulated pharmacy standing behind it. This entry is a warning, not a how-to: the accountable route to these medicines runs through licensed medical care, and "cheap and easy online" increasingly means "unregulated and risky."
Graded by The Peptide Era · evidence, not hype