It reaches Dallas.

THE SKIM

• The FDA told four American peptide companies that the semaglutide, tirzepatide and retatrutide they sell are unapproved new drugs, using a law that has nothing to do with compounding pharmacies.
• The Wegovy pill split into three prices on September 1: $149 for the smallest dose, $199 for the next, $299 for the two largest.
• Zepbound’s cash price went up on every dose sometime after July 24, and we did not notice for 39 days.

On September 1, 2026, the FDA published warning letters to four American companies that sell peptides. One of them is a limited liability company on West Commerce Street in Dallas.

Two Sundays ago we asked whether that law would ever be used this way. It was, a week before we asked.

The floor

THE FLOOR

United States

$149 USD/mo

Wegovy pill, NovoCare

verified 2026-09-26

Canada

C$88 CAD/mo

Apo-Semaglutide, Costco

verified 2026-07-26pending our own verification

Nothing moved since the last edition. Same floors, re-checked, last verified 2026-09-26.

NovoCare lists the 1.5 mg Wegovy pill at $149 with no end date attached, after the August 31 review it published came and went without changing this dose.

We check on the morning of August 31. Whatever the floor does, you will read it Wednesday, and alert-holders hear the day it moves.

Set a free alert and we email you the day one of these moves, or the day a drug that has never had a price gets one. Set an alert →

Cheapest verified price we hold per market, promotional and introductory offers excluded.

Every figure above, and every other price we hold, is on the price board with the date we checked it and the method we used.

It reaches Dallas

THE LAW NOBODY WAS WATCHING: not the compounding rules, the ones underneath them.

Start with the term, because everything here turns on it. An unapproved new drug is one the FDA has never cleared for sale. Selling one across state lines is its own federal violation, and it has nothing to do with whether you are a pharmacy.

That distinction has been the shape of this story for two editions. The rules the FDA spent this year tightening govern compounding, which is pharmacies mixing drugs to order. They do not reach a chemical vendor who never claimed to be one. In August we wrote that a different set of provisions does reach them, and that whether the agency would actually use it at scale, or stop at letters to offshore websites, decided whether the peptide channel was reachable at all.

On September 1 the FDA posted four warning letters, all issued on August 24, all from its drug evaluation centre, all under the same subject line: unapproved new drugs, misbranded. The recipients are TXP Innovations LLC, trading as Tex Peptides, of Dallas, Texas. Royal Peptides LLC. NuScience Peptides LLC. Peptide Partners LLC.

All four are American limited liability companies. Not offshore websites.

We read the Tex Peptides letter in full. It lists the products in the seller’s own naming, and the FDA’s words are worth quoting exactly:

“Semaglutide (GLP-1 SEM),” “Tirzepatide (GLP-2 TRZ),” “Retatrutide (GLP-3 RT)” and others “are unapproved new drugs under section 505(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”

Introducing them into interstate commerce, the letter continues, violates sections 301(d) and 505(a). The FDA describes its review as a review of the company’s website.

Note the product names, because they are the seller’s and not the agency’s. There is no such thing as a “GLP-2” or a “GLP-3” drug class. Tirzepatide and retatrutide are not numbered sequels. Somebody invented that shorthand to sell chemicals, and the FDA quoted it back.

Now the limits, which matter more than the headline. Four letters are four letters, not a crackdown. A warning letter is not a prosecution and none of these companies has been found liable of anything. And we read one of the four in full; the other three we know only by their subject line and their date.

What changed on September 1 is not the volume. It is the demonstrated reach.

Downticks

the week's business, in short

The $149 era narrowed

Novo Nordisk answered on September 1 the question it spent August refusing to answer. Its own page had said only that pill pricing would “be updated after August 31, 2026,” naming a new figure for one dose and staying silent on the other. The silent one held: the 1.5 mg Wegovy tablet is still $149 a month direct from NovoCare. The 4 mg went to $199, exactly as published. And two doses this board had never carried appeared at once, 9 mg and 25 mg, both $299. The headline number survives on the smallest dose only. A reader who takes 4 mg pays a third more than they did on August 31.

It went up and we did not notice

Zepbound’s cash prices at Lilly’s own pharmacy rose on every dose. The 2.5 mg starting vial went from $299 to $349, and every maintenance dose from 5 mg through 15 mg now costs $499, against $399 and $449 before. We verified the new figures on September 1. We had last verified the old ones on July 24, which means our board carried stale prices for 39 days on a site whose whole promise is that every number shows the date it was checked. Our own status file flagged those rows as unverified every single morning of it. Nobody read the flag.

Watching for

what moves next.

• The other three warning letters, and the size of the wave. We have read one of the four in full. The other three carry the same subject line and the same August 24 issue date, which is suggestive and is not proof they say the same thing. FDA publishes its own warning-letter index, so this is a wave we can count ourselves rather than take on trust.
• How many people are actually on the Medicare GLP-1 discount programme. The White House said on August 31 that over 500,000 seniors had used it. The same day, the head of Medicare said 600,000. Both numbers reach us through trade coverage and we have read neither original, so we are not printing either as fact. A hundred thousand people is the gap between two statements from the same administration in the same week, and we would like to know which is right.
• The injunction ruling in Novo Nordisk’s case against Eli Lilly, day 15. A hearing was held on August 28, 2026 and Novo gave a closing argument at it, which we know because Novo’s lawyers wrote to the judge about their slides afterwards. As of the last refresh of the court’s public case file available to us, stamped September 1, 2026 and unmoved since, the latest entry is number 61 and there is no ruling.

That is the brief. Same time Sunday.