Lilly calls for shut down of illegal retatrutide black market

12 August 2026

US pharma major Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) today escalated its continued fight to protect patients from the dangerous black market for its investigational obesity drug retatrutide, filing six new lawsuits against US entities selling black-market products in addition to having referred hundreds of bad actors to regulators and law enforcement worldwide.

Lilly noted that the US Food and Administration (FDA) has made clear that sales of unapproved retatrutide to consumers are illegal, that retatrutide cannot be lawfully compounded, and that so-called "research-use only" products "are of unknown quality and may be harmful to [consumers'] health."

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