John Oliver on gas station drugs: ‘Dangerous substances that can be made by just about anyone’
The Last Week Tonight host dug into the unregulated ‘wild west’ of kratom, boner pills and ‘gas station heroin’
On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver focused on the rise of gas station drugs, the brightly colored bottles and pills that are sold at the registers of US convenience stores. Promising increased energy, pain relief or improved sexual performance, these unregulated products often contain tianeptine, a drug known as “gas station heroin”.
“While you might assume they’re just snake oil, that’s not necessarily true,” said Oliver. “Some of these drugs can be actively dangerous, presenting risks of addiction just like controlled substances.”
One such drug is the red-bottled Zaza, a synthetic product which mimics the effects of opioids and is sold as a legal alternative to narcotics in gas stations. After playing an interview clip from a former addict who once consumed 250 Zaza bottles a month, Oliver said: “There is so much that is alarming here. From the notion of a gas station having an opiate aisle, to the fact that that is too many tiny bottles of anything to go through in a month.”
Stories like this are becoming increasingly commonplace, Oliver noted, as people seek these products out for recreational use, or to self-treat symptoms such as depression and fatigue. “These drugs exist in a regulatory wild west,” the host said. “Many of the companies try to evade regulation with creative labeling, marketing them with language like ‘For research purposes only’ or ‘Not for human consumption’.
“But the most common tactic is simply labeling the product a ‘dietary supplement’” he went on. Thanks to a 1994 law, there is “no central process whereby products calling themselves supplements are tested or approved before they hit the shelves …All of which means that the FDA and other regulators are playing an impossible game of catchup.”
Oliver then turned his focus to sexual enhancement drugs, which often have names to suggest wild, untamed animals such as Black Panther, Blue Panther, The Goat, Super Bull, Anaconda and Boner Bears. “Boner pills demonstrate pretty effectively the extent to which gas station drugs can be made by just about anyone,” Oliver said, explaining that packaging and pill casings can be freely built online and filled by vendors with whichever supplements or substances they choose.
“You don’t want a pill’s ingredients to essentially be dealer’s choice,” laughed Oliver. “You would never tolerate that level of variance in other products. You would be justifiably annoyed if it turned out that some Cadbury Creme Eggs were filled with marinara sauce.” Some boner pills have been found to include the active ingredients in Viagra and Cialis, while others contained printer ink and ground-up drywall, and the FDA is basically ‘“powerless” to stop it.
The host moved on to focus on products containing kratom, which is marketed as an energy booster or mood lifter, and has opioid-like properties. “Many states have no requirements for labeling when it comes to these products, [so] it can be hard to know exactly what you are buying,” said Oliver. And “because these products seem low risk, people can feel comfortable taking much more than the recommended dose.”
After playing a clip of Joe Rogan bragging about getting “fucked up” after taking eight kratom pills at once, far exceeding the recommended dose of two, Oliver responded: “Joe, what the fuck are you doing?”
“It really is worth knowing what you’re ingesting and the potential dangers, because [kratom] can be addictive,” Oliver went on. “Certain components of the kratom plant interact with your brain in the same way as opioids.” Some manufacturers go even further, boosting the effects but synthesizing a compound called 7-Hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), which is about seven times stronger than morphine.
A 2024 report found that kratom and 7-OH contributed to or caused at least 4,100 deaths over a three-year period. “And there is every chance that that is an undercount, given that these substances are new enough that death investigations don’t always detect kratom or 7-OH,” Oliver said.
The final gas station drug that Oliver discussed was tianeptine, a “cognitive enhancer” often sold under the names Zaza, Tianna and Neptune’s Fix. While the drug is prescribed as an anti-depressant in Europe, the FDA has not approved it for US medical use. It’s “not a great sign,” Oliver commented, that tianeptine has become known as “gas station heroin”.
“On its face, that sounds like the title of a pretty good Lana Del Rey song,” he joked. But the drug has been linked to hundreds of overdoses and deaths, leading Alabama to ban the drug a few years ago.
“It is hard to believe that something so immediately dangerous could be sold at the gas station next to the lottery tickets. It would be like finding out that PetSmart sells hand grenades next to the hamsters.”
Robert F Kennedy Jr and the FDA have been discussing the dangers of some of these products, “which I guess is good”, said Oliver. “I do worry that RFK is either going to say they cause autism or suggest that they somehow be replaced by ground up raccoon carcass. But still, it’s something.
“If states are going to start banning some of these drugs, that should only happen alongside a plan to help people who cannot suddenly stop using them,” Oliver concluded. “Whether that’s because they have been using them to treat pain, or they’ve become addicted.
“If we learned one thing from the opioid crisis, it’s that every family fortune is built on the blood of strangers,” he said, flashing up a Sackler family plaque. “But if we learned two things, it’s that when you take something very strong off the market, not everyone can just quit cold turkey.”
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