Health Canada has won a court order barring a Quebec company from selling unauthorized injectable peptides, according to a report by Canadian Affairs on the country's fast-growing peptide market. The products were marketed online to consumers looking for faster muscle growth, weight loss and anti-aging effects.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids that occur naturally in the body, some acting as chemical messengers and others helping build proteins involved in metabolism, growth and tissue repair. Insulin has been used for almost a century, T-20 is prescribed for HIV, and the GLP-1 drugs Ozempic and Mounjaro are peptides too, which is precisely the problem for anyone trying to draw a line between the established and the experimental.

Why GLP-1s changed the conversation

Kyle Ganson, a professor of social work at the University of Toronto who co-authored a recent paper on injectable peptides, told the outlet that GLP-1s have "sort of normalized peptides as a particularly safe, effective tool." That normalization, he said, has carried the category out of conventional medicine and into the broader longevity economy.

Ganson frames it as the next iteration of a long-running consumer question about optimizing the body, recovering faster and living longer. The science, however, does not travel at the same speed as the enthusiasm.

Where the evidence stops

Popular compounds circulating online such as BPC-157 and KPV have little or no human evidence behind them, according to the report. Retatrutide has shown promising results in clinical trials but has not been approved by regulators.

Julia Nevski, a medical student at Western University who runs a peptide harm-reduction project, argues consumers should think of peptides on a continuum rather than as simply safe or unsafe. She points to melanotan, where she says the data "isn't just thin" but shows risks of moles and melanoma.

The influencer gap

Ganson's paper, published in JAMA, found peptide-related hashtags had generated more than 130,000 Instagram posts and 230 million TikTok views by May 2026. He says influencers face no legal repercussion for promoting experimental compounds, sometimes with discount codes they earn a kickback on.

Upstream, not enforcement

Health Canada's June injunction against Canlab Research followed an earlier order the company did not comply with. Both researchers argue the durable fix is upstream: public awareness, mental health and body image support, and teaching people to ask how old a study is, what it tested, and who funded it.