Warning over online 'smart drugs' that can kill The report entitled Human Enhancement Drugs - The Emerging Challenges to Public Health charts unprecedented growth over the past few years in the usage of such drugs, sourced from a vast and illicit market. Many users do not fit the stereotype druggy and come from respectable background but believe ordinary characteristics need improving. Professor Mark Bellis, co-author and Director of the North West Public Health Observatory and Centre for Public Health, said: "We are seeing a redefinition of what health means. For many, the consequences of a natural ageing process are no longer acceptable. For other perfectly healthy people, they feel their strength, intelligence or looks still require treatment. They want the slim bodies shown in the media but not necessarily the strict diet. They want a pill that instantly gives them a quicker thinking mind and the edge on their competitors. We now have to wrestle with the largely unknown issue of how powerful drugs affect healthy people. This requires an entirely new science. Jim McVeigh, co-author and Deputy Director of the Centre for Public Health, said: "The snake oil salesmen are still with us, making unrealistic claims about what their potions can do, concealing their contents and forgetting to mention their unfortunate, sometimes fatal, side effects. Travelling salesmen have been replaced by websites but the effects are the same. It's almost impossible to find who is selling these drugs or to hold them to account for any harms they cause. The report said: "There is also the issue of over medicalisation, a phenomenon that blurs the distinction between normal life events and disease. Ageing, being overweight, sexual performance, hair loss, shyness, tiredness and being "too" short are some of the events that have been redefined as medical issues and "treated" with drugs. This is causing more people to seek out such treatments, a growing number of whom appear to obtain them from the illicit market. Doctors need to be aware of the potential that patients may be taking the substances without knowing they are taking potentially dangerous drugs or may be too embarrassed to admit it. Skin lightening creams have caused mercury poisoning, weight loss supplements containing an untested drug caused liver damage and deaths and sexual enhancement products sold as herbal remedies but adulterated with a diabetes drug have caused serious brain damage and deaths, the report said. These reports are likely to be the 'tip of the iceberg', the report said.