In February this year, Britain’s pharmacy regulator introduced strict protocols on the sale of weight-loss jabs, adding them to its list of “high-risk medicines” and enforcing extra safeguards in order to ensure they were not being abused. Yet researchers at the Tony Blair Institute have now called for the drugs’ eligibility criteria to be “drastically lowered”, so that they become available to people who are overweight but not yet obese.

The think tank has suggested that the jabs should be available through the post or over the counter, without the need to see a GP first, arguing that the current rollout “perpetuates access based on the ability to pay rather than need”.

Currently, the NHS rations weight-loss injections to around 4,000 people per month, although a further 500,000 are thought to obtain the treatment privately for around £200 per month. Expanding the BMI criteria would mean around 26 million Britons would be eligible, with 15 million expected to take up the offer.

The TBI is right to say that “the cost of treating obesity may be high, but the cost of not treating it is higher.” Yet allowing pharmacies to become pill-mills for weight-loss drugs without any clinical oversight seems like a terrible idea.

Semaglutides — the medical name for a class of weight-loss jabs — are remarkable drugs for suitable patients: they can have amazing results for people with diabetes or those who need to lose weight for life-saving surgery. Their simultaneous benefits of weight loss, blood sugar regulation and reduced cardiac event risk are nothing short of a medical miracle. However, they are not, as many advertisers and celebrities would suggest, a lifestyle product, cosmetic treatment or wellness fad. They are serious drugs with potentially serious side effects, and should be treated as such.

Many of the gastrointestinal side effects are well-documented, but others are just emerging. One study is investigating the link between weight-loss drugs and sudden vision loss, while another warns that semaglutides can also lead to loss of bone density, as patients experience dramatic weight loss but none of the muscle and bone benefits of exercise. The singer Avery, who is 30, spoke earlier this year about her diagnosis of osteoporosis after abusing Ozempic as part of her eating disorder, outlining the pressures to be thin in order to be “beautiful and successful”.

Another study found a 45% increase in suicidal ideation in patients taking semaglutides. In those who were taking SSRI antidepressants as well as Ozempic, this constituted a terrifying 345% increase. As Ozempic slows down the rate at which the stomach empties, it alters and delays the absorption of psychiatric medications, which can be dangerous given that users are often very sensitive to changes in their dose.

This is why we need clinical oversight of these drugs. GPs know more than just a patient’s BMI: they know their medical history. Given how open to addiction and abuse these drugs are, GPs need to check in with patients to make sure they don’t go too far — as happened to the TV personality Sharon Osbourne, who lost three stone in four months and is now unhappily underweight. The NHS may indeed be slow in its rollout, but a cautious approach is better than a reckless one.

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Kristina Murkett is a freelance writer and English teacher.

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