By Sabrina Siddiqui and Sara Ashley O'Brien
The substances, manufactured in China, come in tiny glass bottles with names like "Glow Stack" and "Wolverine Stack." They promise youthful skin and speedy muscle recovery, delivered in injectable form. Influencers, celebrities and everyday people are raving about peptides, unapproved drugs driving a gray-market craze.
And they now have an ally in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who wants to make peptides easier -- and legal -- to buy.
Kennedy is poised soon to take action that would allow compounding pharmacies to make certain peptides that are currently restricted by the Food and Drug Administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Peptides make up a broad category that includes FDA-approved drugs, supplements and experimental treatments. Technically speaking, peptides are short chains of amino acids that act as messengers in the body.
But today "peptide" has become shorthand for an injectable drug that hasn't undergone FDA approval. Sold primarily through an online gray market, where they are labeled "for research use only," the vials can run from tens to hundreds of dollars apiece.
Influencers and podcasters have cast these drugs as a way to look and feel amazing.
"This is my skin before taking GHK," said a 22-year-old living in Austin, Texas, who goes by the name of Greta Devereux on TikTok. She has shared a before-and-after with her 59,000 followers: Her face, once splotchy with some acne scarring, is now clear, bronzed and glowing. She credited it to GHK-Cu, one of the restricted peptides sold as a stand-alone as well as part of what is known as the "Glow Stack."
Kennedy has called himself a "big fan" of these alternative therapies and promised to end the "war on peptides."
In a recent interview on Joe Rogan's podcast, Kennedy unveiled plans to lift restrictions on more than a dozen peptides that he claimed were illegally recategorized under the Biden administration. Kennedy appeared to be referring to roughly 17 peptides the FDA reclassified in 2023, citing "potential significant safety risks," barring compounding pharmacies from making them.
Kennedy, who told Rogan he has used peptides himself "with really good effect" to treat unspecified injuries, didn't offer further details on what steps he might take. At least two career staffers at the FDA whose work includes compounding drugs said they learned of the health secretary's plans to take action on peptides only from his appearance on Rogan's podcast.
People familiar with the plans said the administration's goal is to let compounders make the banned peptides again and shut down a gray market of products that Kennedy said is a result of existing regulations. Some within the FDA are worried about increasing access to untested treatments.
Before the 2023 restrictions, pharmacies were able to compound peptides that had been prescribed by a physician. Since the FDA moved many of them to its "do not formulate" list, online sellers have cashed in on selling unregulated peptides, most of them from Chinese suppliers, in a gray market at steep discounts.
"Americans are at greater risk from the gray market than they will be if a state-licensed, legitimate compounding pharmacy is preparing these drugs," said Scott Brunner, chief executive of the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, a trade group. "Let a prescriber use her medical judgment to treat a patient."
Others said the idea that Americans would be safer getting unapproved peptides from compounders doesn't make sense. "How is that different from saying, 'If we don't legalize raiding bank vaults people will just rob banks?'" said Shabbir Imber Safdar, executive director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines, a public-health coalition that focuses on supply-chain safety.
He said the regulatory filter on medicine exists to check for safety, efficacy and trustworthy manufacturing. "It's not just that the substance itself has been deemed safe and effective," he said. "It's also that the source and supply chain are safe and effective."
Last year two women became critically ill at an antiaging conference in Las Vegas after they received peptide injections at a booth run by a California-based doctor known for promoting alternative therapies. Although an investigation was unable to conclude exactly why the women became ill, regulators in Nevada fined the doctor, who wasn't licensed in their state, along with two other people in connection with the incident.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman at HHS, declined to share specifics about Kennedy's plans but alluded to concern about people accessing peptides through the gray market. In the absence of FDA-approved products, Nixon said, the Trump administration wanted to ensure that alternative therapies "are made by licensed U.S. pharmacies, prescribed by a physician and produced under appropriate quality standards -- not products from unregulated or foreign sources."
One route the administration could take is exercising enforcement discretion, under which the FDA would refrain from penalizing the compounding of certain unapproved peptides when demand is high, safety risks are low or no alternatives are available. That idea has gained traction among at least some members of Congress, including Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R., Tenn.), a pharmacist. She wrote a letter to Kennedy in November urging the FDA to use enforcement discretion for certain peptides that she said were "critical to processes" such as metabolism, immune response and tissue repair.
Brunner of the pharmacy-compounding trade group said that would amount to "a temporary fix," adding that a new administration would simply change the rules within a few years.
Rory Hester, a seller in Idaho, currently lists peptides for "research use only" on the website for his company, Crush Research. He said he doesn't approve of anyone's using his product for human use but declined to comment on whether the research being conducted included buyers using it on themselves.
He said some of his peers believe action by Kennedy could ultimately cause a boom in their corner of the industry.
"Middle Americans, all of a sudden, they are going to start learning more about peptides," he said. "It's going to legitimize peptides."
Write to Sabrina Siddiqui at sabrina.siddiqui@wsj.com and Sara Ashley O'Brien at sara.obrien@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 22, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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