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The Houston Chronicle\u2019s investigation of Empower Pharmacy began in 2025 with a tip about a former employee who accused the Houston-based company of using subpar ingredients in weight loss drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Illustration by Susan Barber, photo AP\/Manuel Balce Ceneta, images of documents<\/p>\n
The Houston Chronicle began reporting on drug quality concerns at Empower Pharmacy back in April 2025,<\/a> after receiving a tip about a former employee who had accused the company of using subpar ingredients in its GLP-1 weight loss drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n We were surprised to learn that the self-described largest compounding pharmacy in the country \u2014 a key player in a complex industry rapidly extending its reach \u2014 was in our own backyard. We wanted to go beyond the quality concerns at the pharmacy to better understand its increasingly prominent role in expanding drug access for millions of Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n We spent the next year examining how Empower\u2019s attempts to create a new pharmaceutical supply chain \u2014 one that isn\u2019t subject to the same quality or disclosure standards as traditional drug manufacturers \u2014 not only enables access to cheaper drugs but also challenges the systems designed to keep patients safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n This story is part of the series \u201cA Dose of Disruption: How America\u2019s desire for GLP-1s and testosterone fueled the growth of Empower Pharmacy and roiled the drug industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n Our series, “A Dose of Disruption,” was based on a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. Food and Drug Administration compliance records, policy guidance documents, adverse event reports, state pharmacy board records, lawsuits, email exchanges, state prescription data and internal sales records.<\/p>\n We reviewed publicly available inspection records for Empower Pharmacy and other compounders throughout the country. We scoured public databases for lawsuits. We obtained additional records of adverse events associated with Empower and the pharmacy\u2019s communications with the FDA through Freedom of Information Act requests.\u00a0<\/p>\n We attempted, unsuccessfully, to sit down with Empower Pharmacy officials during the reporting process, but interviews with numerous former employees added more context to the documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n With the help of reader callouts, social media posts and LinkedIn messages, we connected with patients and doctors to better understand how patients were accessing compounded testosterone and GLP-1s, as well as the potential risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n To quantify the growing demand for compounded testosterone therapy, we parsed, categorized and localized over six years of controlled substance prescription records maintained by the Texas Prescription Monitoring Program. The data amounted to nearly 200 million records for prescriptions filled from March 2019 to August 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/files.sfchronicle.com\/static-assets\/compression-bot\/1781586000_adoseofdisruption.png\")
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