Jasmine Sun

And then once they did that, they wondered, well, maybe there's a magic shot I can buy for skincare or for productivity or for all of these other benefits.

And so people are now experimenting with a much wider range of less tested, non-FDA approved peptides that promise to do things like increase your muscle growth, help you sleep better, all sorts of things.

It's a very interesting landscape.

Yeah.

So personal use is legal in the sense that an individual, an adult in the US can inject themselves with whatever they want.

In this case, they're not like on the DEA list or anything like that.

However, when people are buying these peptides from Chinese drug manufacturers, they're usually purchasing them as quote unquote research chemicals.

And so these are meant to actually be sold to scientists who are doing science experiments with the peptides.

They are often explicitly labeled on the vials, quote unquote, not for human use.

However, this is a gray market in the sense that people can purchase them saying, yeah, I'm doing research on myself and inject them anyway.

And the peptide suppliers, they're happy to make a buck.

They will just turn the other way.

Yeah, so I do think the initial appeal of peptides is that they aren't super expensive.

And you can get them for something like one-tenth, one-fifth of the cost than when you go on market because you're buying them in vials with just the ingredient.

You have to mix them yourself and inject it in yourself.

It's not coming in these pens automatically.

And the market for peptides, including the gray market, is actually growing a lot.

So when I looked at the U.S.

customs data, we saw the imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China specifically roughly doubled to $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025, up from $164 million in 2024.

So it's more than doubled.