● in recent years, “thin” has become an important index pursued by many beauty lovers. Many people are attracted by “wanghong” weight-loss drugs and food, and are involved in the vortex of “weight-loss drugs” and can’t extricate themselves. Some people don’t lose weight, but their bodies are broken

● in order to quickly achieve the purpose of weight loss, some weight loss drugs have added prohibited ingredients such as sibutramine and ephedrine, which are prone to heart palpitation, insomnia, gastrointestinal adverse reactions, liver and kidney damage, endocrine system disorder and other problems after long-term use

● health, market supervision and other government departments should establish and improve the joint law enforcement mechanism, strengthen the supervision and investigation of illegal weight loss drugs and foods, severely punish the exaggeration and false publicity of weight loss advertisements, order them to stop publishing and impose a fine

□ our reporter Zhao Li

□ our intern Chen Lijia

Thick dark circles under the eyes, waxy yellow and gray complexion… Standing in front of the reporter of the rule of law daily, Chen Lu, a 36 year old Beijing resident, looks very tired, and his overall image is much older than his actual age. Two years ago, she bought a diet pill from the Internet and lost 15 kilograms in two weeks, but her body had all kinds of adverse reactions; I still feel a lot of headache and palpitation after 45 kg of medicine. She tested the diet pills and found that they contained sibutramine.

Chen Lu’s experience is not alone. In recent years, “thin” has become an important indicator pursued by many beauty lovers. Like Chen Lu, many people have been attracted by “online Red” weight-loss drugs and food, and have been involved in the vortex of “weight-loss drugs” since then. Some people have not lost their weight, but their bodies have been destroyed.

In a recent interview with reporters, a number of industry insiders and experts proposed that the competent government departments should establish and improve the joint law enforcement mechanism, strengthen the supervision and investigation of illegal weight-loss drugs and foods, and strengthen the qualification audit of settled businesses on the e-commerce platform, strengthen daily management and inspection, squeeze the profit space of illegal businesses and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.

A large number of false advertisements flooded the Internet

Businesses pursue profit by all means

“Drink ×× Slimming tea has lost 16 kilograms in one month and has not rebounded in three months. ““ Korean prescription slimming drugs, direct mail back home, pictures and videos, no diet, no diarrhea, no side effects, easy weight loss “… On the social platform, there are a large number of advertisements for slimming drugs and food, and all kinds of hype advertising documents, coupled with perfect” s “shape body curve pictures, have attracted many beauty lovers.

Ms. Li from Henan saw similar publicity - “the research and development of traditional Chinese medicine hospital, one piece in the morning and one piece in the evening, lying down and falling off balance!” I was so excited that I bought a “net red” weight loss tablet candy. However, after taking it, Ms. Li had adverse reactions such as headache and insomnia for up to a week. Ms. Li, who felt cheated, wrote her experience in the comment area, hoping to make more beauty lovers “lightning arrester”.

According to Zhou Yanjun, a video blogger who has been in deep contact with the weight loss drug industry for many years, the online marketing of weight loss drugs has a fixed model. The interest groups behind it package products, such as publishing the successful counter attack experience of weight loss on the social platform, attracting the attention of netizens and then selling products; Implant your own products into the trendy weight loss methods to attract consumers to buy; Some also invite online bloggers and stars to endorse and publicize.

Zhang Jun, who lives in Dongcheng District of Beijing, was fooled into buying a product called Thai slimming sugar. After taking it, he first wanted to drink water and go to the bathroom. Later, he didn’t want to eat all day, didn’t feel hungry, and was accompanied by symptoms of anemia. “In the most serious case, as long as you lower your head and lift it up, you will feel dizzy.”. She was so frightened that she stopped taking it.

Wang Yadong, a lawyer of Zhejiang Jindao law firm, handled a number of disputes involving weight-loss drugs and food, and also represented a case of suspected crime due to the sale of illegal weight-loss drugs at the beginning of this year. He believes that there are three reasons for the confusion of this market: the huge market demand and the incorrect social orientation and values behind the demand; Buyers believe that eating diet pills has quick effect, no hard exercise, and lack of professional judgment. They believe that diet pills, especially diet foods, are not harmful; The profit seeking nature of businesses and the huge market have attracted countless businesses. Some businesses are marketing by any means, leading to a vicious circle.

It costs less than 50 yuan and sells for hundreds of yuan

Anything can be stuffed into the capsule

In 2021, sun qiaolu, the actor of Ling Meiqi, a small magic fairy in “Balala little magic fairy”, died of acute myocardial infarction. In his video before his death, he talked about his experience of trying 50 kinds of weight-loss drugs: most of the effective components of weight-loss drugs are laxatives, which have had an adverse impact on the body, not only leading to memory loss, irritability, but also renal dysfunction, palpitations and other conditions.

During the interview, many respondents such as Zhang Jun and Ms. Li couldn’t help asking: what are the weight loss drugs and foods they bought?

Zhou Yanjun said that the weight loss drugs and foods on the market can be divided into appetite suppression, hormones, biguanide hypoglycemic, gastrointestinal lipase inhibitors, diuretics, laxatives, food extraction, food meal replacement, etc. the weight loss principle is to reduce the intake of body calories and improve the metabolism of the body, so as to achieve the purpose that the consumption is greater than the intake.

“In order to achieve this goal quickly, some weight-loss drugs have added banned ingredients such as sibutramine and ephedrine. Taking them for a long time is very prone to problems such as palpitation and insomnia, gastrointestinal adverse reactions, liver and kidney damage, endocrine system disorder and so on.” Zhou Yanjun told reporters.

According to Zhu Yi, an associate professor of the food College of China Agricultural University, sibutramine is a drug that acts on the central nervous system to suppress appetite. Although it has a certain weight loss effect, it may have side effects such as high blood pressure and accelerated heart rate, which can cause death in severe cases. As early as 2010, China has announced to stop the production, sale and use of sibutramine preparations and APIs in China, but there are still some bad businesses illegally adding sibutramine to weight-loss drugs and food.

Zhou Yanjun said that the profits of diet pills are quite high. Sometimes a box of diet pills sold for hundreds of yuan on the market costs less than 50 yuan. She recalled that around 2019, she began to directly contact the manufacturers of weight-loss drugs, “the manufacturers will directly tell me the content of ingredients in each weight-loss drug, for example, half is medicine and half is starch; at that time, weight-loss drugs were basically