Won't be anywhere near that. I don't have prices handy, but Lilly sells tirzepatide (a bit better than sema, and usually a bit more expensive) at 500/mo (maybe a bit less now on the trump rx site, I don't recall). Depending on dose, that'll be about 10 bucks a mg give or take. At 50c/mg for sema you were paying a bit of a premium. These days even tirz is only about 30-35c/mg.
I used to buy from Peptide Sciences so I was certainly paying a premium for reputation at $20/mg. I think Semaglutide is now at a bit of a premium due to it falling out of favour and most people switching to Triz and Reta. I only take a low dose and am happy to stick with what's working.
There must be an irony that it was Trumps crackdown on peptides, I presume to prop up his prescription company, that forced me to switch to Chinese supply. By doing it all at once it created a critical mass for that market.
IIRC the biggest impetus for cracking down was Lilly throwing a fit about the gray market supplying reta well before it even becomes available via the normal channels (who knows when that will be). But as you say, it just pushes people to buy direct from Chinese vendors (and it is basically impossible to stop direct imports like that). Would be safer if more reputable US-based sellers could supply it semi-openly as before. Nexaph is still selling it, but I figure the clock is ticking on that.
> and it is basically impossible to stop direct imports like that
How so? Is there a particular characteristic of the US that makes it so, or of the channels through which this is done? I get that in general it's impossible as with recreational drugs, but when you look at cocaine then at least to traffick it to most wealthy countries it takes a large amount of resources and is at high risk of getting caught. Which is why they're increasingly starting to use narco submarines. This greatly increases the price of the product. Why can't the same happen to peptide imports?
The US is a rather dysfunctional country along many axis and an inability to stop imports is one of them. The difference between drugs and peptides is that by weight peptides are much more valuable. 1kg of cocaine is $28K, fentanyl is $150K, and semaglutide is $500K.
High-Performance Liquid Chromatography so purity and concentration.
Back when I started few people were doing this and it was more of a risk, I was buying from research peptide vendors who had their own testing practices, but now a huge number of people are doing it and there are markets where reputations matter and it appears to be reasonably efficient.
I would prefer not to inject peptides from gray market China but practically all of the gray/black market supply is from there. I will likely switch to pharma grade when generics become available.
Im a libertarian at heart so cant argue too much with people's personal choices, but I can only say that given what I know can go wrong in even the best maintained lab, I wouldn't ever do what youre doing. Yes its all great today, but the day something goes wrong, you may not be happy finding out how its affecting you. Look up the bayer factor viii hiv incident.
Things go wrong all the time, it's a balance of risks / rewards given the information we have. For me the cost of doing nothing is that I succumb to ME/CFS and end up homeless in addition to still having ME/CFS which might as well be a death sentence.
Last I checked, Ozempic (Semaglutide) is around $1000/month in the US. A typical 1 month pen is 4-8mg, so around $250/mg to $500/mg. So yeah, I may have understated how much cheaper the gray market version is.
Novo Nordisk's drugs can be had as low as $250/month through third party (which is weird), though they'll probably honor those prices in direct sales before long.
My gf is in medicine so she had a friend test it through their work.