🚨 Category 2 to Category 1 — RFK Jr. Says 14 Peptides Could Be Coming Back to Compounding Pharmacies
New Joe Rogan podcast just dropped this week — RFK Jr. addressed the peptide situation directly, and it’s encouraging for compounding, but I’m not going to get my hopes up for what this means for the research space. I’ll drop the whole podcast here:
Here’s the breakdown 👇
What actually happened with peptides?
Starting in late 2023, the FDA quietly moved 17 popular peptides to “Category 2” of the 503A Bulk Drug Substances list. Category 2 = compounding pharmacies can no longer legally make them. The peptides that got hit hardest include:
BPC-157
TB-500 (Thymosin Beta-4)
CJC-1295
Ipamorelin
AOD-9604
Thymosin Alpha-1
Ibutamoren (MK-677)
Epitalon
GHK-Cu
Melanotan II
Selank
And several others
RFK’s words on this were clear — he called it illegal. The FDA is only supposed to move peptides to Category 2 if there’s a legitimate safety signal. There wasn’t one. They’re not allowed to act on efficacy concerns. They did it anyway.
What happened next?
The compounding market dried up — but demand didn’t. So a gray market filled the void. RFK acknowledged this directly: “We created the gray market.” Obviously this community knows there are quality metrics in place, but the higher ups just don’t understand that.
What’s the path forward?
RFK told Rogan he wants to move approximately 14 of those peptides from Category 2 back to Category 1 — meaning compounding pharmacies could legally make them again and patients could access them through legitimate, licensed channels with proper quality oversight. He said an FDA announcement could come within weeks of the interview recording.
Some movement has already happened — in September 2024, five peptides (CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, Thymosin Alpha-1, AOD-9604, and Selank) were removed from Category 2 and sent to the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC) for review, which is the first step toward Category 1 status.
My Take:
Every time I hear people in the compounding space (or above it) talk about peptides, it’s the same narrative: “They’re untested.” “They’re bogus.” “It’s black market or gray market.”
That argument feels outdated.
Anyone actually paying attention knows how much third-party testing many vendors are doing today — purity, net content, endotoxins, the works. And let’s be honest: a lot of compounding pharmacies are sourcing raw materials from the same upstream manufacturers that research vendors use.
You’re going to see more headlines and commentary about peptides. Just understand that a lot of it will come from people who don’t fully understand how the current landscape actually works.
What does this mean for research purposes?
In the short term — absolutely nothing. But hopefully a lot less scrutiny going forward. 🤙
However, there’s a flip side worth watching. If any of these peptides go through full FDA approval and get patented by a pharmaceutical company, research-use-only vendors could find themselves in serious trouble. We’re talking cease and desist letters, and potentially being forced to stop selling those compounds entirely. It’s happened before in this space and it could happen again. Something to keep a close eye on as this all unfolds.
Drop your questions below 👇
In my opinion RFJ Jr sees the phenomenal money that can be generated through peptides. He's got a 2 fold winning situation for himself.
The 1st is that with a lot of folks not knowing how to navigate the gray market, which let's face facts, the gray market is anything that is not prescription generated. Once they see it in compounding pharmacies and these Telehealth sites selling it, they're going to jump on it. He looks like the hero because now he's brought great products to improve people's health into the mainstream for significantly lower costs than prescription drugs. People can afford to better their health so he's a hero to the people.
The second winning situation he has is the added revenue that the government will get from these peptides being ok'd for compounding pharmacy sales. He gets to score brownie points with his boss because we all know how much his boss loves money. Not trying to be political but we all knew this before the man was president.
This benefits him greatly to pursue the compounding pharmacies becoming a reality for these 14 peptides. Once he gets the 14 pushed through I have a feeling he's going to move on to even more. If his boss gets involved in pushing it through it will happen. Look how fast Covid vaccines were approved without proper testing once the president got involved. The FDA for sure can be influenced & absolutely has a price that it will sell out for.