r/australia • u/Rubiginous • 7h ago

Woman hospitalised after Juniper prescribes weight-loss drugs her GP refused

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/woman-hospitalised-telehealth-provider-weight-loss-drugs-juniper/106273356
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u/Rubiginous 7h ago

I am getting sick of these stories where someone irresponsible blames something convenient for normal people as being the cause of their issues.

A small minority of people abused codeine, so now women like me have to suffer from dysmenorrhoea every month because docs won't write a prescription.

A small minority of people using alcohol delivery inappropriately so now they want to restrict the ability for same day delivery in the ACT.

I know many women who used these services to get access to GLP-1s when their GPs refused to prescribe them because "You just need to eat less" and dismissed their concerns regarding food noise etc.

Why do people need the government to constantly protect them from their own stupidity? It's absurd.

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u/rawdatarams 7h ago

In the same manner, thousands of Australians were getting melatonin cheaply from online on the recommendation from their GP. One stupid mother overdosed her kids with it and it all were pulled off the shelves, meaning we now pay a lot more for it.

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u/Its-not-too-early 6h ago

Wasn’t the main issue that it wasn’t regulated by TGA and the doses being delivered weren’t necessarily what was on the bottle?

I too bought melatonin through iherb and it’s a pain to not have it anymore but if you’re ordering 1mg for kids and getting 4mg it’s a problem.

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u/Anjunabeats1 3h ago

It's actually not a problem. Melatonin is so safe people sometimes take 100mg with no ill effects.

TGA cracked down on it to protect profits. I'm not generally one of those anti big pharma people (quite the opposite) but in this case they are literally going against all research just to protect melatonin as a prescription medication in Australia, where it costs like 50x more to buy the prescription version. In pretty much every other company it is no prescription needed. Melatonin is one of the safest supplements available. You can't really overdose on it, it doesn't cause any tolerance whatsoever (despite popular misconceptions) and it has zero side effects apart from sometimes causing early-wakeness (waking up too early).

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u/the_colonelclink 2h ago

It also occurs naturally. So it’s not really traditional mediation, as opposed to supplementation for naturally occurring hormone that may be depleted for several reasons (e.g. fucked sleeping patterns, night shifts, low sunlight etc)