WITH a concerningly quick heartbeat, a swollen face and body that had erupted in painful red blotches, Ben* knew something was deeply wrong.
Three days had passed since the 25-year-old had popped what he believed to be a real Viagra pill as he sought to spice up his sex life with his girlfriend.
ITVXStashes of fake Viagra pills from one raid in the US – the tablets were sold widely in the UK[/caption]
Police raided nine homes and two sophisticated labs over fake Viagra and other counterfeit meds in 2022Greater Manchester Police
Despite getting frisky more than seven times within a matter of hours and then multiple times more over the 72-hour period, his erection hadn’t subsided.
Ben (not his real name), who also suffered worrying health problems before the effects of the pill wore off, is among a growing number of young people to be stung by fake Viagra.
They are now Britain’s best-selling knock-off drug with regulators seizing a record £6.2million of the dodgy pills last year – exceeding more than three million doses.
The counterfeit tablets are being bought for as little as 50p online and flogged for triple that price, but concerningly, there are a range of deadly filler ingredients added when they are created in dodgy secret labs.
Some contain the Class A drug amphetamine, commonly known as speed, as well as blue printer ink, drywall, acid, road paint and a powerful antibiotic used to treat vaginal fungal infections.
The substances can cause liver damage, irreversible health problems and even prove fatal due to increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes when unknowingly combined with other medications.
And it’s not the over-40s, who the ‘little blue pill’ was targeted at, that are the main consumers.
It is increasingly young men using it to ‘pre-game’ in case they get lucky, fearing after a night out on illegal drugs or alcohol they won’t be able to get an erection.
Among them is Ben, now 26, who intended to buy an over-the-counter sleeping pill from an online pharmacist – only to be sold ‘Viagra’ as well, which he later used before going partying.
He told The Sun: “The email from the pharmacist said they had just massively over-ordered a batch of Viagra and that the manufacturer would not take them back. I asked if they were real and was told of course. I think I paid around £5.
A Manchester operation made millions of pounds worth of fake ViagraGreater Manchester Police
“They seemed very cheap. She said they wanted to sell them and not destroy them as it seemed such a waste. She said just take one an evening. It felt odd but I was up for it.
“I have no problem with ‘getting it up’ at all. I just thought it would be fun to take one at the weekend with my girlfriend. So, I popped one of these pills on a Friday night.
“They were blue and diamond-shaped, they had Pfizer on one side and VGR 100 on the other, just like Viagra if you Google an image of it.
“Nothing happened for a while, then I felt extremely horny. We were a bit drunk too after going to a club with some friends.”
Ben says he remained “ridiculously hard” for an unreasonable amount of time – and despite having sex seven times within a matter of hours it didn’t help.
“I was getting worried by now,” he says. “This thing just wasn’t going away. My heart was racing, my face was bright red, and I’d come out in red blotches all over my body.”
It took 72 hours for the symptoms to pass and during that time, his genitals were sore, he found urinating painful and he noticed an unrelenting desire for sex, irrespective of how many times he got frisky.
All the young lads are doing it. They should be in their prime…they do it because they want to be a good s**g…they just want to impress the ladies
Unnamed fake Viagra dealer
Ben couldn’t leave the house either due to his arousal being apparent, taking the experience from something “to giggle and show off about” to “embarrassing”.
“You can’t disguise stuff,” he tells us. “You can’t hide it. It’s always there. I ended up not going out for three days.
“By day three, I actually had to bend over to make it less painful. I tried everything to make it go away. More sex didn’t help, a hot bath eased the pain. I tried ibuprofen to make the swelling go down, but nothing helped.
“Eventually during day three it started to go away… by this point, it was sore and tender. I was walking around like I’d been kicked in that area.
“The only conclusion I could come to was that this pill had contained much too much of the active chemical, so it was like taking two or three times the normal dose.
“No permanent damage was done thankfully, but I won’t be taking Viagra in the future.”
ReutersThe arrest of one fake Viagra peddler in what was believed to be the world’s biggest lab for the counterfeit blue pill[/caption]
ReutersKnock-off Viagra remains a booming trade to this day[/caption]
Health chiefs are deeply concerned about the high volume of fake Viagra flooding into the UK, with more dodgy blue pills impounded than copies of addictive painkillers morphine and tramadol.
Last year alone, around 2.6million doses of unlicensed sildenafil and half a million tadalafil pills were confiscated as well as drugs sold under the name Cialis worth £1.2million.
In 2015 gang members who made up to £60,000 a week selling fake Viagra through a bogus mail order fishing tackle business, were sentenced for being part of what the judge described as a “highly-organised, large-scale criminal enterprise”.
Judge Charles Wide QC said ‘The real mischief is the catastrophic damage that could be caused’ to the public because of the ingredients found in the dupe drugs.
The scam, based in north-east Lincolnshire and Sussex, resulted in Neil Gilbert, 42, from Brighton, being sentenced to six years for his “major operational role”.
Gilbert was said to be head of the Sussex part of the operation, which offered cheap ‘Viagra’ and other knock-off medication.
How does Viagra work?
SIDENAFIL – the main ingredient in Viagra – belongs to a group of medicines called phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors.
It works if you have erection problems by temporarily increasing blood flow to your penis when you get sexually excited.
It also works in pulmonary hypertension by relaxing blood vessels in your chest.
This increases the blood supply to your lungs and reduces the workload of your heart.
Men over 18 can take the pills for ED and most adults and children aged over one can take sildenafil for pulmonary hypertension.
Sildenafil is not suitable for some people.
To make sure it’s safe for you, speak to your doctor or pharmacist before taking sildenafil if you:
Have ever had an allergic reaction to sildenafil or any other medicine
Are taking medicines called nitrates for chest pain (angina)
Have a serious heart or liver problem
Have recently had a stroke, heart attack or a heart problem – your doctor should carefully check whether your heart can take the additional strain of having sex
Have low blood pressure (hypotension)
Have a rare inherited eye disease, such as retinitis pigmentosa
Have sickle cell anaemia (an abnormality of red blood cells), leukaemia (cancer of blood cells) or multiple myeloma (cancer of bone marrow)
Have a deformity of your penis or Peyronie’s disease (curved penis)
Have a stomach ulcer
Have a bleeding problem like haemophilia
Source: NHS
That year in 2015, £11million worth of the fake blue pill was seized – and the booming illegal industry doesn’t appear to have been curbed.
One year later, what was believed to be the biggest illegal lab in the world was raided near Bydgoszcz, in Poland.
More than £3.5million worth of pills, including 100,000 fake viagra tablets, were found during the raid – many of which were previously flogged to horny Brits online.
Reports of Kamagra gel, a liquid version of Viagra made in India, was reported to have flooded the UK club scene in 2019 due to being sold cheaply at just £3 a hit.
One peddler told a newspaper they were even flogging them at car boot sales after buying them in bulk, getting 1,000 sachets for 50p each, and brazenly admitted: “Even most of the fake ones work.”
In 2022, Greater Manchester Police raided nine homes and two sophisticated labs to crack down on a multimillion-pound operation that created Viagra among other drugs including Diazepam.
ReutersMillions can be made from the trade too[/caption]
Central NewsNeil Gilbert (left) and his gang made £10m selling bogus Viagra[/caption]
In more recent years, counterfeit tablets are believed to predominantly originate from secret labs in the Middle East, including India and Malaysia, and are sold online by dealers running dodgy websites that look reputable and sell for as little as 50p.
Experts estimate half the Viagra sold – as well as similar product Cialis, generic name Tadalafil – are knock-off versions.
The goods are unlicensed, untested and often laced with dangerous filler ingredients, meaning users are risking their health and even death.
A drug dealer featured on BBC 3’s Drugs Maps of Britain revealed he sells ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine, but his most popular product is fake Viagra.
The Leeds criminal told the programme he buys 20 for £5 and sells a strip of ten for £15.
The dealer said: “All the young lads are doing it. They should be in their prime…they do it because they want to be a good s**g…they just want to impress the ladies.
I was getting worried by now, this thing just wasn’t going away. My heart was racing, my face was bright red, and I’d come out in red blotches all over my body
Unnamed fake Viagra user
“I sell more of that than any other drug and it’s mostly the young lads who are paying for it.”
In Manchester, a 28-year-old woman told The Sun just how common use of Viagra in pill or gel form is used.
The woman, who asked not to be named, said: “It’s standard for anyone you might hook up with on a night out to be taking Viagra.
“I know quite a few lads who take it as a recreational drug on a night out.
“Some guys I’ve been with are upfront about it, maybe they admit it because they are taking other drugs which stop them getting hard, or it could be quite a personal issue.
“I’ve suspected some have done it but not told me they’ve done it.
Stiff Nights is among the knock-off but not illegal fake Viagra pills
“I don’t have a problem with it. If that’s what a guy feels he needs, that’s personal, and some will do anything to make themselves more confident when they’re having sex on a night out.
“It’s so easy to get. They buy it online or from a dealer, and there’s more access to the gel form, which is like a flavoured jelly. It’s just becoming more and more normal.”
‘Younger & younger’ users
Dr Jeff Foster is an NHS GP and medical director of men’s health specialists Manual, as well as appearing on ITV’s This Morning.
He believes young men have an unrealistic idea of how they should perform, due to porn being so easily accessible.
He said: “We’ve seen younger and younger men coming in asking for Viagra.
“I think there are multiple reasons for this. Probably one of the main reasons is public perception and what young men think they should perform as.
Some guys I’ve been with are upfront about it, maybe they admit it because they are taking other drugs which stop them getting hard, or it could be quite a personal issue.
Unnamed woman
“Young men are accessing greater degrees and more intense porn of the likes which didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago. Certainly when I was younger there was no access or the type of degree or intensity there is now, and at younger ages.
“This is quite worrisome as it projects an inappropriate version of what sex and what relationships should be like.
“There is also the expectation that men should just be able to perform, at any time and any point and should be able to achieve a sexual prowess that is just unheard of for 99 per cent of the population.
“Unsurprisingly most men are not porn stars and are not able to perform in a way that is perceived to be normal following watching pornography.
“A lot of men are coming in thinking they have erectile dysfunction and thinking they have smaller than normal penises, and this just simply isn’t the case.”
AmazonKamagra, a Viagra gel made in India, is popular with clubbers[/caption]
Abbas Kanani, superintendent pharmacist of Chemist Click, told The Sun: “Reports suggest the market for counterfeit drugs used in sexual medicine, most notably type 5 phosphodiesterase inhibitors (PDE5i, like sildenafil, vardenafil, tadalafil, and avanafil), is rapidly growing.
“Lifestyle drugs are the most counterfeited products found by police investigations in developed countries, such as in Europe and North America, with PDE5i having the largest share of the market.
“Yes, the advice is to not buy counterfeit Viagra online. The use of sildenafil without medical supervision by young men is being continuously researched.
“Sildenafil has become a popular recreational drug among young adults without a medical need which poses serious risks.
“Potential for interactions with other medications can lead to serious life-threatening conditions such as heart attack and stroke and there are currently no regulations to prevent young adults from purchasing drugs without a prescription.”
* Names have been changed.
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