The honey aisle in supermarkets can get pretty confusing. Gone are the days when you’d have one or two types of honey based on your local flowers. Now, in big shops at least, there’s a seemingly endless variety of honey, ranging from light yellow to dark brown or even black. Some kinds of honey claim to be healthy for you or have antioxidant properties… and some claim to increase your sexual potency.

You won’t find the latter in any regular shops, however. They usually come from shady producers and are sold on the black market, in night shops, or online, where it’s sometimes advertised as “Viagra honey” or a “natural sexual enhancer”. In France, customs seized record quantities of it, most of it laced with Viagra and other medications.

While these products might sound intriguing, let’s cut straight to the point: they’re a scam — and potentially dangerous.

The truth behind the buzz

Let’s make it clear from the start: there’s no such thing as erectile honey.

There are many claims that honey is an aphrodisiac, but there’s very weak evidence for that (read: no real evidence). Granted, everything can be arousing to some people. But if you’re looking for food-based sexual stimulants, stick to berries, chocolate, or a glass of red wine.

The sellers of this type of honey usually claim it’s got some special flower or some special bee or something. There’s no evidence of anything like that being real. As far as any evidence can go, it’s just a scam. There’s “mad honey” that gives you psychedelic trips but there’s no sex honey.

The real secret behind the Viagra honey is, well, Viagra. The honey is usually laced with Viagra, Tadalafil, or other types of sexual enhancement drugs. The FDA said as much in 2020 and 2021 when they issued a warning against such products.

“Despite FDA consumer warnings about similar products over the past decade, the agency continues to find potentially dangerous products available for purchase on the internet, including from online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, as well as in retail stores. The agency urges consumers to beware of purchasing or taking these products.”

It can even be dangerous

It’s not just the erectile drugs that the honey is laced with. Usually, it also contains some other (often unknown) pharmaceutical products.

“All 26 of the products the FDA purchased on Amazon and 20 of 25 products, or 80 percent, purchased on eBay contained undeclared active pharmaceutical ingredients. The FDA’s laboratory testing found the products contained various undeclared active ingredients, including sildenafil, tadalafil, vardenafil, sibutramine, desmethylsibutramine, phenolphthalein and/or fluoxetine. Many of these are active ingredients for use in FDA-approved prescription drugs, which are restricted to use under the supervision of a licensed health care professional.”

Some of the honey seized in France also contained unknown pharmaceutical products, raising concerns that people might be putting themselves in danger.

In the US, you can typically only get Viagra or similar drugs with a valid prescription. In the UK, you can get them over the counter whereas, in France, you just need a routine medical visit. But even so, the popularity of erectile honey seems to be increasing.

How big is the problem?

As with most things sold on the black market, it’s hard to say how much Viagra honey is being sold, but one thing’s for sure: demand seems to be rising.

According to French customs, in 2019, they seized 18 cases of illegally imported products. In 2023, they made 131 seizures. In 2024, the largest seizure alone was 13 tons of erectile honey, coming from Malaysia. A translated statement reads:

“Unlike the 31,000 tons of natural honey whose legal importation into our territory was controlled by Customs last year, which mainly comes from Ukraine, Belgium, and Spain, these adulterated honeys come from Malaysia, Turkey, Tunisia, and Thailand. They arrive by sea, in containers in large quantities, or by express freight, in smaller volumes, following purchase on the internet.”

There are already several established brands (Black Horse, Etu Max, Bio Max, Mesk Elyamen, naming just a few). They tend to have serious-looking packaging and generally come in the form of sticks of a few grams (typically 15-20 grams). The sticks are sold individually in shops for a few euros (one euro is around 1.04 US dollars).

Buyers and consumers are unaware of or underestimate the potential danger of these products, the French Customs adds.

“Since the quantity of adulteration is unknown, and the doses consumed are not recommended or quantified, the consumer takes significant risks by consuming this type of adulterated honey, especially since no mention of the dosage, contraindications or mention of adverse effects appears on the pods.”