$200 got me a vial of peptides in minutes, AI teaches how to inject it

A Re: News investigation finds peptides are being illegally sold in broad daylight, and customers are turning to AI chatbots to tell them how to inject the substances. Local and international experts say the information gap is pushing this growing trend into private and unsafe spaces, with more harm reduction resources urgently needed. Zoe Madden-Smith reports.

“I have a 20mg vial and some bac [sterile] water. Write me up a protocol.”

That’s the kind of prompt someone I spoke with asked an AI chatbot when she needed guidance on how to inject herself with peptides. She will be kept anonymous in this story for privacy reasons.

Watch the full investigation on TVNZ+

“TikTok is probably the most knowledgeable spot [for peptide information] but I always tell my mates to use AI,” she told me. “It’s literally like having a doctor in your phone.”

Peptides are chains of amino acids that help your body regulate itself. Your body naturally produces peptides. For example, insulin is a naturally occurring peptide that turns food into energy and manages your blood sugar level.

While some peptides like GLP-1 (used in prescription medications like Wegovy) are Medsafe approved, many peptides are not and come with serious safety risks because they are not clinically proven or routinely tested. In fact, there are no large-scale clinical trials on many of the peptides being promoted on social media.

The peptides I am referring to in this article are unapproved synthetic peptides that are engineered to mimic naturally occurring hormones. These peptides are unlawfully imported as powders and then mixed with sterile bacteriostatic water before being injected into the body. The practice carries serious health risks, including a risk of needle injury, incorrect dosing and contamination.

There is an entire catalogue of peptides that advertise everything from muscle growth and repair to weight loss and wrinkle removal. Some people combine multiple peptides at once - a practice known as “stacking” - with popular combinations called “Wolverine” or “Fountain of Youth”.

There is a lack of published data about peptide use in New Zealand, however Google Trends data shows a significant jump in New Zealanders searching for things like ‘peptides’, ‘buy peptides’ or ‘peptides nz’ since January 2025.

Key to the chart above: Using the relative scale from 0 to 100, a score of 100 means it was at its most popular during that period, a score of 50 means it had about half as much interest as the peak, a score of 0 means there wasn’t enough data to measure. Source: Google Trends.

NZ Drug Foundation programme lead Emily Hughes says queries from the public about peptides were rare at the start of 2025. But now, it gets daily queries and people coming to get their peptides tested every week.

“We've seen a massive increase in the use and availability of peptides,” Hughes says. “They've gained mainstream notoriety and now anyone is able to just buy them online and have them shipped to their house.”

Hughes says the reliance on AI for peptide education shows the drastic information gap in New Zealand. She says this is fuelled by some users not feeling comfortable telling their health provider they are using peptides, and so they are turning to online forums for health advice instead.

Hughes wants people to understand that because there isn’t a clinical body of research of many synthetic peptides, AI is pulling information from all sorts of platforms like TikTok and Reddit that aren’t verified.

“These platforms also don’t take into account that everyone’s body is different and people have their own unique risk factors when it comes to their health.”

Since December 2025, many peptides have been classified as prescription medicines following a recommendation from Medsafe’s Medicine Classification Committee. The change means it is a breach of section 43 of the Medicines Act 1981 to import and possess peptides that are prescription medicines.

Medsafe told Re: News in a statement: “Any product sold for a therapeutic (health) purpose is a medicine... It is unlawful to sell any peptides for a therapeutic purpose unless licensed or otherwise authorised under the Act to do so.”

Medsafe and Customs both confirmed to Re: News that peptides without a prescription identified at the border are destroyed.

If you look closely at the vendors claiming to sell peptides online you commonly see the words ‘for research purposes only’. Vendors use this phrasing to market the peptides as not for human consumption to try and get around the Medicines Act.

However, Medsafe says “use of disclaimers such as ‘for research purposes only’ do not make the sale lawful”.

These same websites or social media pages also use bulging biceps and glowing, poreless complexions to market their products. They also often sell needles and bac (sterile) water to make up the injections.

Medsafe says it has seen a sustained increase in illegal peptides at the border and complaints about online sales of these products.

The agency has been contacting sellers to warn them these sales are illegal. It says: “Medsafe has had a good response from NZ-based websites removing these products from their sites.”

While researching peptides over the last month, I have witnessed some of these websites being taken down in real time. But, there is still a wild west of vendors on social media.

Knowing the sale of these peptides are illegal, I was shocked to find how easy they were to access.

Since doing this investigation, my algorithms are now littered with videos of people injecting their stomachs.

Every few videos there are ridiculously muscular gym junkies and bunnies posing and flexing in mirrors. But also post-partum mums and people on weight loss journeys telling me what peptide ‘stack’ they are using and what side effects they have felt.

I started to notice some of these users have linked accounts that appear to be selling peptides in their bio, some even have personalised discount codes.

The users also promptly respond to other people’s comments asking them where to buy peptides. “DM me” they say repeatedly (DM is short for direct message).

The accounts that appear to sell peptides are often completely stripped back, many don’t have content posted at all but suggest different ways to reach out to them. A clear attempt to get around social media platform community guidelines that intercept messages detected as suspicious.

I got hold of a peptide seller at 12.45pm on a Tuesday and by 1.27pm I had the small vial in my hand.

The initial phone call lasted two minutes. He seemed confused at first and asked my name but then quickly switched into sales mode.

“I’ve got tirzepatide, GHK-Cu and retatrutide all on hand in Auckland. We are doing the 10mg vials at $200 and the GHK-Cu can come down to perhaps $160 or $170 depending on how many you want,” he tells me.

Tirzepatide is a controlled medication in New Zealand approved by Medsafe for treating type-2 diabetes or obesity. It is illegal to import or possess without a prescription.

Retatrutide (or reta) is a popular peptide marketed as having similar weight loss effects but is not approved by Medsafe.

Medsafe told Re: News it is “particularly cautious” about the use of retatrutide. It said: “International reports link it to fatal overdose and contamination. Medsafe warns that individuals should not use it and to seek medical help if needed.”

GHK-Cu is a peptide touted for everything from reducing wrinkles and hair growth to fading scars – it is not approved by Medsafe either.

“Do you need bac water for reconstitution? I can chuck that in there for $40,” the seller continues before asking if I would prefer to pick it up now or have it sent to my house.

The in-person exchange takes almost exactly one minute, I know this because the voice recording I took is 62 seconds long.

As I turn down the street, he’s leaning on his car and smiles when he spots me pulling over.

He introduces himself and hands over something small wrapped in bubble wrap. It’s broad daylight in a residential neighbourhood. There’s a group of builders in hi-vis working on the house next door about three metres away from us. So close you can hear them talking and hammering in the voice recording.

As I tuck the package in my pocket he quickly jumps back into sales mode, telling me what else he’s selling, although he keeps saying “we”.

“We’ve got GHK-Cu which is for skin and hair and scaring for acne as well,” he says. I smile and nod, trying my best not to take this personally as I picture the faint acne scars left on my cheeks from when I was a teenager.

I decline the offers and drive away in disbelief. Before I’ve left the neighbourhood, my phone buzzes with a message from him: “Thanks for your support and I look forward to hearing your results!” He also offers to give me a discount if I refer my friends onto him.

His next text is a PDF file that is allegedly a certificate proving the retatrutide’s purity – 99.725% according to a testing company which says it specialises in steroid and peptide analysis.

But who knows if this test is legitimate? Or if the vial in my hand is part of the batch that was tested - especially because the document is now six-months-old.

NZ Drug Foundation drug checking machines can test for over 30,000 different substances, but peptides have been hard to detect because of their molecule make up, Hughes says.

“On top of that, there's just so many of them, and they're evolving so quickly that having reference standards and being able to detect them is really, really challenging.

“The market has exploded so much faster than research has been able to keep up with,” she says.

Hughes says it is still worth getting your peptides tested because the machines can detect if it is something harmful like fentanyl, heavy metals or bacteria.

The test involved taking a small sample of the powder and shining infrared light through it.

“It’s like a fingerprint,” says NZ Drug Foundation deputy executive director Ben Birks Ang, who conducted the test. “The computer will run through its library, comparing it to how much it matches others in the library.”

The results were in within just a couple of minutes. “It’s showing what we would expect with peptides,” Birks Ang says.

“We haven't been able to identify if there are peptides in here or what kind of peptide it is. We haven't found some of the concerning things that we were looking for. But this is an inconclusive result,” he says.

It’s worth noting I paid $200 for 10ml for retatrutride, one of the most popular peptides NZ Drug Foundation sees – but even then, the test was inconclusive. I was also given no information about how many doses this was, how I should mix it with bac water and inject or how long it lasts before it expires.

“It’s also found another medication,” Birks Ang says. “That's not necessarily saying that it is that medication. We've seen this sometimes before with peptides where that's the closest match to here.”

Birks Ang says a test result will lead into a conversation with the client about how they were planning to take the substance - if they are injecting it, making sure they know where to get sterile needles and how to monitor wound care.

“We would educate them about not sharing needles with other people or using needles more than once. Each time the needle goes into your skin, it becomes a little bit blunter, so that increases the risk of more tearing and damage to the skin that can get infected,” he says.

Any test with the NZ Drug Foundation is free and confidential. Each client will be given an alias name and will never be asked their real name or address.

Dr Tim Piatkowski started using peptides like BPC-157 (muscle repair) and melanotan II (tanning) more than 15 years ago, but no longer uses them now.

He says while they have been accessible for a long time, the ability for social media and AI platforms to “hand hold” people on how to use them has increased their popularity and access. It’s also widened the types of groups who now use them.

“We are seeing a lot of women and older people. It really is the next-door neighbour, people in our society,” he says.

Piatkowski is a senior research fellow at the University of Queensland and leading expert on the use of peptides. He also provides harm reduction education for people who use peptides and other performance and image enhancing drugs through QNECT - a help line collaboration between University of Queensland and QuIVAA.

He says what concerns him most about the rise of peptides is the lack of health promotion to go along with it.

“People will come to us and say, ‘I have this vial of product X. I was told to use ten, but ten what?’

“They've got no idea how to break down the powder, no idea how to do the calculations. No idea what dosage to use, how long the powders last or how to inject.”

In the past, he says, needles have been associated with drug addiction. But now, it’s more normalised to inject yourself, and people who have never injected are now injecting daily.

“Some people are completely unaware of how to inject safely, that you can’t just wipe a needle and use it again,” he says. “It’s not a core part of our health services delivery because it was never this widespread and so we risk infections and injury.”

Piatkowski says he is not surprised people are turning to AI or social media for peptide education.

“If a 19-year-old went to the doctor and said, ‘I'm injecting peptides. Can you help me?’ The common response we hear is clinicians says ‘no, stop, don’t do this’. And then that's the end of the conversation.”

Through his work, he says he is encouraging clinicians to come to the table and help supervise people, with checking their bloods and doing echocardiograms (heart monitoring).

“We need to accept people are going to do this whether it’s safe or not. So we need to do the work and partner with people in the community with social capital so we can connect with people and reduce harm that way.”

Hughes says the NZ Drug Foundation is also working to target different groups who have typically never engaged with needle exchange services.

“Don't be afraid to use harm reduction resources, they are for everyone,” she says. “If you don't feel comfortable talking to your doctor, please engage with our drug checking and harm reduction services. Our needle exchange services also have wound care as well.

“We don't want people to feel ashamed if they're using these substances, because that just drives them further into not seeking support if things do start to go wrong.”

Despite Medsafe’s move to bolster the Medicines Act to regulate more peptides, both Piatkowski and Hughes say regulation of peptides is not the solution.

“It's not a solution for drugs like methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine. It's not going to be a solution for peptides,” Hughes says.

“People are going to continue to use these substances. So what we need to do is take a health-based approach by putting in safeguards so that we can reduce people harming themselves.”

For more harm reduction information on peptides please visit:

NZ Drug Foundation

The Level – Straight up drug info

QNECT – harm reduction information based in Australia

AI is teaching people how to inject peptides - Watch on TVNZ+