Thousands of slimming pills containing a banned drug that puts people at risk of a heart attack have been taken off the streets of Greater Manchester in a dawn raid, reported Manchester Evening News.
According to the newspaper, medicines regulators discovered thousands of the illegal pills hidden in the wardrobe in a children’s bedroom when they swooped on a house in Bolton.
Officers from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency also discovered thousands more tablets when they raided a lock-up in the town.
They seized nearly 26,000 imported Lida DaiDaiHua pills with a street value of around £50,000. They also discovered a stash of imported breast enlargement cream suspected of containing banned drugs.
Packaging from the pills claimed they were ‘100pc herbal’, but they contained a drug named Sibutramine, which was banned in Britain in 2010 amid fears it increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.
The medicines found at the semi-detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac near Bolton town centre had been imported from the Far East and were being sold to unknowing customers on the internet, reported M.E.N.
“We seized approximately 26,000 tablets of a slimming product that claims to be 100 per cent herbal, which in reality contains the ingredient Sibutramine.
“Anyone taking these pills would think from the packaging that they are a safe and natural product, but anyone with a heart problem could be at risk of a heart attack or a stroke and they just wouldn’t know,”Danny Lee-Frost, head of operations for enforcement at the agency was quoted as saying by M.E.N.