Devastating damage of unregulated wave of botox bandits
Users put at risk of permanent harm
BOTOX is being illegally moved through hair salons and administered by unqualified people, a new documentary has found.
Shocking images of the devastating and permanent damage done to people’s faces have laid bare the consequences of a largely unregulated cosmetics industry.
The RTÉ Investigates programme reveals how easy it is to buy prescription-only medications and the widespread practice of moving them across the border from the North.
The beauty industry in Ireland covers everything from lip fillers to anti-wrinkle injections, and from thread-lifts to cosmetic dental procedures.
However, many of the treatments are being advertised by people on social media ‘away from the glare of any regulation’.
Beauty industry expert Nikki Dwyer said: ‘One of the problems that presents in A&E clinics around the country is botched filler. Filler is not considered to be a prescription drug. It’s a medical device. I can
‘You don’t need to sterilise needles’
go and do a two-day online course on how to inject fillers and I can get insured and legally inject fillers in this country.’
But by law, only a doctor, dentist or registered nurse can currently administer botox, and this has paved the way for unlicensed practices to flourish.
Undercover filming featured in tonight’s documentary reveals how one unqualified individual is running a beauty salon from the bedroom of her apartment in Dublin and is advertising on Facebook. ‘You don’t need to sterilise. With botox I’m using a very small insulin needle,’ she told an undercover reporter.
However, Dr Sana Askary, a member of the Aesthetics Complications Expert group, refutes this. ‘That’s opening you up for so many risks – infection, abscess. Of course you have to sterilise before an injection.’
It is illegal to administer botox to anyone under 18 in the UK, but in Ireland there is no age restriction – it is up to a qualified doctor to use their discretion.
There have been calls for an urgent review of the regulation in the provision of non-surgical cosmetic services. A Patient Safety (Licensing) Bill was introduced in 2016 and went through an Oireachtas Health committee in 2018. The Bill aims to introduce a licensing requirement for people practising aesthetic medicine, and that includes many cosmetic procedures. But eight years after the Bill’s introduction it still hasn’t come through the Dáil.
As part of research for this investigation, RTÉ reporter Pamela Fraher set up a fake aesthetic clinic, creating a social media page ready for clients to contact. Several competitors on their social media sites referenced an online academy called LFK, Lips for Kiss. You can buy video training, including a 20-minute video with instructions on how to administer botox. After watching the video, an RTÉ reporter was sent a certificate to show she had ‘successfully completed the course Botox by Lips for Kiss’.
Tonight’s RTÉ Investigates documentary will also show how mass volumes of prescription products, including botox-type products, are being flown and posted to Newry and collected by beauticians all over Ireland. One major supplier selling large quantities of unlicensed botox from Korea, named in tonight’s programme, tells the undercover reporter: ‘You put them in your bag, drive across the border. No police, no customs, no nothing.’
He goes on to say: ‘I have girls who drive all the way from Clare, from Limerick, from Cork. And they all go pick it up. I used to have a girl in Newry who used to pick it up, then go across the border to Dundalk and post.
‘The other facility I have in Newry where I send all of my parcels, and all get picked up there. I have a lady in Clare, she sends the husband up because she is buying such a lot from me. She’s buying like £4,000-£5,000 worth of stuff every month. There’s about 10, 12 girls in Dublin [I supply].’
The Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) is tasked with policing this area. In the past three years alone, the HPRA has detained more than 10,000 dosage units of medicines containing botulinum toxin, hyaluronidase or lidocaine. Last year, it increased its detentions of botulinum toxin products by more than 400%, and has also taken four successful prosecutions in relation to misuse.
During a six-month investigation, RTÉ Investigates found large numbers of people handling, selling and prepared to inject this medication illegally. Much of this product is unlicensed botox coming from South Korea.
The President of the Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons said he is ‘shocked’ and ‘stunned’ after viewing undercover footage of the activities of some people working in the beauty industry in Ireland.