DES MOINES, IOWA (September 21, 2026) — Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has joined nineteen other state attorneys general in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging the federal government to crack down on knock-off GLP-1 drugs made with ingredients from Chinese warehouses with ties to fentanyl production.
The Chinese-sourced active pharmaceutical ingredients used in counterfeit GLP-1 drugs include semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide. Those knock-off drugs bypass our nation’s safeguards and are extremely dangerous for American consumers due to lack of safety measures to ensure the drugs are what they claim to be, as well as manufacturer ties to Chinese fentanyl production.
“As GLP-1s become more popular, knock-off versions from China are making their way into our market,” said AG Bird.
“The ingredients for these drugs can come from sources that have produced fentanyl, putting Iowans at risk.
“I’m joining this coalition to ask Sec of State Rubio to crack down on the security loopholes allowing these dangerous ingredients into the American market.”
The letter describes a Chinese company that abused a trusted relationship with the US by allegedly using that trust to obscure the unapproved source of an injectable drug entering our market. The breach was caught by on-site inspection, not by border safeguards. That follows the same pattern as the Heparin crisis nearly twenty years ago that killed or harmed hundreds of Americans.
It has also been recently reported that Chinese manufacturers associated with fentanyl supply chains are finding a new US market in peptides — including cosmetic and weight-loss drugs. The states ask how if entities connected to fentanyl precursor markets are moving into peptides do we know that does not include GLP-1 ingredients and GLP-1-adjacent peptides being introduced into the American compounding market.
AG Brenna Bird and the coalition of state attorneys general ask that they be provided with any information to protect their constituents, including what federal agencies know about foreign GLP-1 and peptide supply chains and their ties to entities involved in fentanyl production, what warning signs state attorneys general should be watching for, and how state and federal partners can better share information before this market gets further out of control.
Read the letter here.
