A man has been sentenced to 16 weeks in prison for attempting to sell thousands of unlicensed erectile dysfunction tablets disguised as diet tea.  

MHRA officers discovered 5,000 tablets at Xiao Ping Yan's home in Barnet, north London including the drug Jia Yi Jian, a "potent" fake herbal product that contained four times the maximum dose of erectile dysfunction drug tadalafil, the medicines watchdog said.

Mr Yan, 58, was sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court on Friday (August 15) to eight weeks in prison for putting the unlicensed medicine on the market without authorisation and a further eight weeks for breaching a suspended sentence, imposed after he was stopped at Heathrow Airport with more than 50,000 tablets of Chinese "herbal Viagra".

In 2009, Mr Yan was cautioned for possession with intent to supply Jia Yi Jian, which contained a combination of tadalafil and slimming medicine sibutramine that "dangerously increased heart rate, and risk of heart attack and stroke", the MHRA said. Tadalafil is the active ingredient in prescription-only medicine Cialas, sibutramine was withdrawn in 2010 because of health risks.

The following year, Mr Yan was stopped at Heathrow Airport with 51,600 tadalafil-containing tablets, which he had imported from China. He was handed a 32-week suspended prison sentence.

Following a tip-off, MHRA officers searched Mr Yan's house in 2012 and found 5,000 tablets in boxes labelled ‘diet tea'. Many of the tablets contained tadalafil, and others included both sibutramine and phenolphthalein, a laxative that was withdrawn from the market due to safety concerns.

Along with his prison sentence, Mr Yan was ordered to pay £600 in court costs within 12 months.

MHRA head of enforcement Alastair Jeffrey said Mr Yan had "recklessly endangered public health". "Products such as these which are adulterated with high levels of pharmaceutical ingredients present a real health risk," he said.

	Is the MHRA doing enough to crack down on those selling unlicensed drugs?