The Friendship Bridge, connecting Brazil and Paraguay close to the long-lasting Iguazu Falls, has lengthy been a route for smugglers shifting low-cost, illicit items, like cigarettes and electronics. But in current years, Brazilian authorities say smugglers have discovered a much more profitable product: weight-loss drugs.
As demand for GLP-1 primarily based medicines explodes in Brazil, seizures of unauthorized weight-loss drugs have soared alongside the Brazilian-Paraguay border. More than 76,000 pens, vials and different merchandise containing drugs equivalent to semaglutide and tirzepatide had been seized on the border in the primary half of 2026 — practically 3 times the quantity confiscated throughout all of final yr, in response to information from Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service.
The surge has turned weight-loss drugs into probably the most invaluable classes of contraband seized in the area, as smugglers capitalize on hovering demand in Brazil and considerably decrease costs throughout the border. Experts say the commerce is more and more attracting organized legal teams as a result of the merchandise are extremely worthwhile and comparatively simple to move.
But well being staff are warning of the hostile penalties of buying these drugs via a casual vendor. Consumers might haven’t any dependable approach of understanding precisely what they are injecting into themselves.
Yet the drugs now rank second in worth amongst items seized by Federal Revenue officers in the area encompassing the southern states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, behind solely cell telephones, in response to federal tax auditor Flávio Bernardino de Carvalho.
“They come on public buses, in cars, in trucks, with tourists. Every possible way,” Carvalho told CNN Brasil. “There’s organized crime and there are individuals. It’s very dispersed.”
At peak occasions, Brazilian authorities estimate greater than 100,000 individuals and 45,000 automobiles cross the Friendship Bridge every day, creating an infinite problem for customs officers attempting to establish illicit cargo. For that purpose, the bridge has lengthy been certainly one of South America’s busiest smuggling corridors.
The provenance of the smuggled weight-loss jabs is typically unattainable to hint. Some are legally offered in Paraguay earlier than being stolen from native pharmacies and smuggled throughout the border, whereas police have additionally uncovered clandestine operations producing counterfeit variations of the drug in the nation, in response to Paraguayan authorities.
Carlos Dure, Commissioner of the Tripartite Command, a police alliance between the authorities of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which share a border in the world, instructed Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project that Chinese imports of the drug had been additionally discovered.
Mounjaro, the one approved tirzepatide treatment in Brazil, by American pharmaceutical Eli Lilly and Company, can value upwards of 1,400 reais (about $280). In Paraguay, an ampoule of regionally manufactured tirzepatide sells for about 340 reais (about $68), in response to Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service.
Public safety knowledgeable José Ricardo Bandeira instructed CNN Brasil that these economics are altering the incentives for legal teams which have traditionally profited from cigarette smuggling.
“Organized crime is migrating. There’s a logic to it,” Bandeira stated. “Cigarette smuggling requires enormous logistics. You need trucks to transport the cigarettes and a series of measures to get the contraband into Brazil.”
The small measurement of weight-loss drugs makes logistics simpler and considerably more economical. While a pack of cigarettes prices about 850 occasions lower than a vial of tirzepatide, in response to Federal Revenue information, it is bulkier to move.
“Because of their small size and high value, the pens are much more attractive,” Bandeira stated. “With a few boxes of pens, you can make the same profit you would smuggling a truckload of cigarettes.”
Authorities say smugglers are additionally making the most of routes and infrastructure that exist already.
“Organized crime has reach,” Bandeira stated. “They share routes, storage centers. They use the same routes they use to smuggle weapons, drugs and ammunition.”
Hidden in sneakers, shampoo bottles and vehicles
Smugglers have resorted to artistic strategies to hide the merchandise. Brazilian customs officers have discovered weight-loss drugs tucked beneath the soles of trainers, stuffed inside shampoo bottles, hidden in containers of therapeutic massage gel and stashed in secret compartments in vehicles.
Other shipments bypass the bridge altogether, in which boats are used to move cargo throughout the Paraná River that varieties a part of the border between Brazil and Paraguay.
Those strategies pose an issue past the illegality of the commerce: Injectable GLP-1 medicines require particular storage situations.
Dr. Alexandre Hohl, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism on the Federal University of Santa Catarina and a director of the Brazilian Association for the Study of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, has lengthy advocated towards the illicit use of medicines.
“Whenever you look for medicine outside a pharmacy, you’re taking risks,” Hohl stated.
He defined that legit drugs cross via a fastidiously managed provide chain earlier than reaching sufferers. Drugs equivalent to semaglutide and tirzepatide are peptides, molecules that require managed situations throughout transportation and storage. Those situations are unlikely to be met when illicit merchandise are carried throughout the border hid in automobiles, sneakers, or towards an individual’s physique, he stated.
Hohl stated peptide drugs can lose stability when uncovered to temperatures above 30 levels Celsius (86 levels Fahrenheit) or under 0 levels Celsius (32 levels Fahrenheit).
The probably consequence of improper storage, he stated, is decreased effectiveness — that means shoppers might pay much less for a medicine that finally doesn’t work as meant.
But the results can probably be way more severe.
Hohl stated the better concern includes merchandise, which origins and contents can’t be verified. “We don’t know where it came from. They’re not originals,” he stated. “They’re copies manufactured in places we also don’t know.”
Producing peptide medicines is technically complicated. If the manufacturing course of isn’t correctly managed, Hohl stated, impurities can stay in the ultimate product.
Nausea, constipation and diarrhea are among the many identified unwanted side effects of authorised semaglutide and tirzepatide, he stated. But signs that are persistent or sudden must be taken significantly when the provenance of the drug is unsure.
Dr. Hohl instructed CNN he has attended to sufferers who reported irregular unwanted side effects after taking smuggled vials of weight-loss drugs.
One of his sufferers ended up in intensive care after utilizing a product offered as tirzepatide from Paraguay. The girl, who was at a traditional weight and had bought the drug with out a prescription or medical indication, developed lactic acidosis, a probably severe buildup of acid in the blood.
In one other case, Hohl had prescribed a affected person a licensed model of tirzepatide, however after the primary month, the affected person switched to a product his father had purchased in Paraguay. Soon afterward, he developed nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and sought medical remedy. Despite the signs, he continued utilizing the Paraguayan product and even elevated the dose, inflicting him to finish up in emergency care.
“Persistent nausea, abdominal pain, headache, skin reactions are some of the symptoms that I’ve seen,” he stated, including that hostile reactions can turn into troublesome to foretell with treatment that is not fastidiously regulated and manufactured. “Immune system reactions, effects that we didn’t see when the original drug was studied, more severe side effects… those are things that could potentially happen.”
Online orders related to GLP-1 medicines elevated 149.3% in Brazil throughout the first half of 2026, in response to a survey by Serasa Experian, a non-public Brazilian information and credit score providers firm that analyzed GLP-1 orders via its anti-fraud know-how. Requests climbed from 547,249 in the earlier six-month interval to greater than 1.36 million between January and June, representing greater than 2.3 billion reais (about $460 million) in purchases.
As demand will increase for weight-loss drugs, Brazilian authorities are now stepping up cooperation with Paraguay in an effort to sort out the rising illicit market.
Brazil’s well being regulator Anvisa signed an settlement final Thursday with Paraguay’s National Directorate of Health Surveillance, or Dinavisa, to strengthen oversight alongside the border between the 2 nations.
But the illicit market might already be shifting past the present technology of weight-loss drugs.
Hohl stated certainly one of his sufferers reported utilizing a product offered as retatrutide, an experimental weight-loss drug being developed by Eli Lilly.
Retatrutide has not been authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration — or by every other regulatory company in the world — and is legally accessible solely to individuals in Lilly-sponsored scientific trials. The firm, which has reported constructive outcomes from a number of Phase 3 trials this yr, says it plans to submit the drug to the FDA for approval in the primary quarter of 2027.
Yet merchandise marketed as retatrutide are already being offered in Paraguay. Hohl stated he has seen such merchandise marketed in the nation and has already encountered a affected person in Brazil who instructed him she had used one.
In Paraguay, commercials for weight-loss medicines are widespread in its second-largest metropolis Ciudad del Este, in response to Brazilian officers. Semaglutide and tirzepatide may also be bought there with out the prescription required via Brazil’s regulated system.
Carvalho, the federal tax auditor, stated authorities are more and more confronting not solely bodily smuggling routes but in addition on-line gross sales and social media, the place sellers can promote the merchandise and customers can trade details about the best way to convey them throughout the border.
For Brazilian well being officers and docs, that could be probably the most troubling elements of the increase: The illicit market is shifting nearly as rapidly because the pharmaceutical one.
“Access is very easy,” Hohl stated. “Today, you can buy it online. You can buy it anywhere. But people need to be careful about what they put in their bodies.”