It is easy to find and buy potency-enhancing pills on the internet. Unfortunately, many of them are not approved by the authorities. This means that they may be detrimental to your health. At worst, they can be lethal. If you consider buying potency-enhancing pills, you should therefore:
- consult your general practitioner
- buy the pills at a Danish online pharmacy or at an authorised foreign online shop.
This information and the text below formed part of the Danish Medicines Agency's campaign against dangerous potency-enhancing pills. The campaign took place from December 2008 to March 2009.
Dangerous potency-enhancing pills
What can happen?
It can be illegal to import medicine
What should I do?
Where can I buy the pills?
Danish prescriptions abroad?
Demand documentation
Think before you shop!
Dangerous potency-enhancing pills
Each week, the Danish tax authorities (SKAT) withhold 100-150 illegal shipments of medicine – most of them contain potency-enhancing pills.
The pills are not just illegal. At worst, they can cause disabilities or even death. So however tempting it may be to avoid visiting your general practitioner or to save money by buying the pills on the internet, don't do it!
You can find the rules on importing medicine into Denmark and get further information on counterfeit and illegal medicine via the factbox to the right.
What can happen?
Potency-enhancing pills that are not approved by the authorities may be very harmful to your health.
The pills can contain anything from filling agents such as lime to more nasty and unpleasant ingredients such as varnish and brick dust. And since no one knows the actual content of the pills, they could easily contain hair, nails and paint. These macabre filling agents will by no means improve your potency, but they may make you very ill.
If the pills contain too large doses of active substances, you could, at worst, become disabled or die. Furthermore, the pills may contain substances that have nothing to do with the authorised potency-enhancing product, and they could also contain substances that are not written on the label. This was the case in the summer of 2008, where six men died in Singapore after having used a not authorised potency-enhancing product.
It can be illegal to import medicine
Apart from the health hazard, it is illegal to import medicine into Denmark from a country outside the EEA (EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). If you import medicine illegally, the Danish Medicines Agency will give you a warning the first time the Danish tax authorities detect your products in customs. The second time you will be fined.
In the factbox to the right, you can find further information on the practice of the Danish tax authorities concerning the withholding of medicine in customs.
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What should I do?
If your experience potency problems, it would probably be a good idea to consult your general practitioner. Your GP may find that medicine would not be the right solution for you. Instead you may benefit from conversation therapy or physical exercises – pelvic floor exercises for example.
Where can I buy the pills?
With a prescription from your general practitioner you can buy authorised potency-enhancing pills online at: Apoteket.dk or Nemmedicin.dk. You can also buy authorised potency-enhancing medicine without a prescription at pharmacies and in certain supermarkets and kiosks, as well as at certain chemists and petrol stations.
Moreover, it is legal to import potency-enhancing pills into Denmark from abroad, if they are:
- for yourself
- bought at a pharmacy or another shop authorised to sell medicine to consumers
- bought in and shipped from an EEA country (EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). However, you may not import medicine from countries such as the USA, Canada or China. NB! An order is not necessarily shipped from an EU country even though the website appears to be European. You should demand the shop to inform you where it ships the medicine from.
Danish prescriptions abroad?
You must hold a valid prescription in order to buy a prescription-only medicine. You must send the prescription to the pharmacy/outlet where you are going to buy the medicine. You cannot transfer prescriptions to other countries via the internet.
Yet, not all EEA countries will accept a prescription from Denmark. You can contact a pharmacy or the pharmaceutical authorities in the country you would like to buy the medicine from to find out if you can use your prescription. This also provides you with an opportunity to find out who is authorised to sell medicine in the country in question.
Demand documentation
If you cannot obtain information from the country's authorities as to whether a given online shop is authorised to sell medicine to consumers, you should demand the store to provide the documentation.
Think before you shop!
- Each week, the Danish tax authorities withhold 100-150 illegal packages containing pills in customs – the majority contains potency-enhancing pills
- At best, counterfeit potency-enhancing pills have no effect – at worst, they may kill you
- It is illegal to import medicine into Denmark from a country outside the EEA (EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein)
- Potency-enhancing pills that are not authorised can contain lacquer, dust and paint
- Potency-enhancing pills containing cement and lime have been found in the EU
- Abroad, several cases are recorded of people who have fallen into a coma, sustained permanent brain damage and have died because of not authorised potency-enhancing pills
- One of the most recent trends is potency-enhancing pills that are sold as natural medicinal products, but which contain active substances in quantities that may be harmful
- Websites selling dangerous potency-enhancing pills are easy to mistake for legitimate medicine websites and they are often based in countries outside Europe.
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Danish Medicines Agency, 1 May 2009
