Britain’s fake viagra epidemic leaves one man with a 72 hour erection

Fake Viagra pills are now Britain’s biggest counterfeit drug with more than 6.2 million tablets being seized by regulators last year.

Some counterfeit Viagra pills are being sold for as little as 50p with many containing a range of harmful substances causing a variety of health complications.

Whilst some have been found to contain other illegal substances such as speed, others have been found to contain printer ink, paint and antibiotics, causing serious complications for those who unwittingly ingest them.

The counterfeit pills are known to cause liver damage, irreversible health problems and can even prove fatal by causing heart attacks and strokes.

Andy Morling, the MHRA’s head of enforcement told The Sun that many men are seeking cheaper drugs online or seeking to avoid going to bricks and mortar pharmacist out of embarrassment. 

He said: “Online is the new front line this is almost exclusively an online trade.”

“There are tens of thousands of websites globally and many of them sell in sterling and ship to the UK.”

Health officials said online retailers flouting regulations were behind the counterfeit supplies with most being imported from countries like India without an appropriate licence. 

Data, from UK regulator The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), show 2.6million doses of sildenafil, the generic name for the medication best known as Viagra, were confiscated last year. 

Another half-million doses of tadalafil, another erectile dysfunction drug sold under the brand Cialis worth £1.2million were also seized. 

One man who found this out was Ben, 26, who detailed to the Sun his experience of taking counterfeit Viagra bought from an online pharmacist

He said: ““They were blue and diamond-shaped, they had Pfizer on one side and VGR 100 on the other, just like Viagra if you Google an image of it. 

“Nothing happened for a while, then I felt extremely horny. We were a bit drunk too after going to a club with some friends.”

Ben says he remained “ridiculously hard” for a worrying amount of time, despite having sex seven times.

He added: “This thing just wasn’t going away. My heart was racing, my face was bright red, and I’d come out in red blotches all over my body.”

It took 72 hours for the symptoms to pass and during that time, his genitals were sore, he found urinating painful and he noticed an unrelenting desire for sex, irrespective of how many times he got frisky.

“By day three, I actually had to bend over to make it less painful. I tried everything to make it go away. More sex didn’t help, a hot bath eased the pain. I tried ibuprofen to make the swelling go down, but nothing helped. 

“Eventually during day three it started to go away… by this point, it was sore and tender. I was walking around like I’d been kicked in that area.

Earlier this year police dismantled a gang selling fake Viagra, hippy crack and illegal vapes worth thousands of pounds in a series of raids on Birmingham shops.

Video footage online shows Trading Standards officers and West Midlands swoop on a series of shops where they found counterfeit vapes, fake cigarettes and other illegal drugs.