Scroll TikTok for five minutes, and you might spot someone with a deep golden tan in the middle of winter. The caption swears there was no sun involved. The secret, they say, is a small injection called melanotan 2.
Sounds easy, right? It also sounds a little too good to be true, and that gut feeling is worth trusting. No regulator has approved melanotan 2 for tanning, and skin doctors keep sounding the alarm. So before you believe a stranger's before-and-after photo, here are the questions that deserve an answer first.
Melanotan 2 is a lab-made peptide that copies a natural hormone. That hormone tells skin cells to make melanin, the pigment that darkens skin. DermNet describes it as an unlicensed and largely untested Medicine.
Don't mix it up with melanotan 1. That one, also called afamelanotide, is a medicine used for a rare condition called erythropoietic protoporphyria. Melanotan 2 is a different compound, and it has no approved use anywhere.
The buzz stuck because it can tan skin and reduce appetite. Every few months, a fresh wave of videos pushes it back into people's feeds. This summer, dermatologists in several countries said the TikTok trend worries them.
Short answer: it isn't a licensed medicine, and selling it is not allowed.
In a 2024 reply, the MHRA said injectable and pen forms count as medicines, and that selling, supplying or advertising unauthorised medicines is not permitted. Nasal sprays are less clear, since the same reply says they aren't always treated as medicines.
A gray area is not a safety stamp, though. The regulator also warns that the contents of these products are unknown and nothing guarantees their quality.
This isn't new. During one older crackdown, the MHRA shut down 72 websites supplying melanotan in just three months.
Some websites claim that owning it isn't a crime because it isn't a controlled Medicine. That may be true, but the rules are tricky.
Type a search for melanotan 2 UK suppliers and you'll get plenty of polished pages. A nice design proves nothing. Try these five questions on any seller.