Brazilian Diet Pills Causing Stir

Imagine failing a pre-employment drug test after taking a diet pill. It seems that a number of popular Brazilian "herbal" diet pills have shown traces of amphetamines, and other substances (via Miami Herald):

Most users aren't aware of the pills' possible dangers. Four women seeking jobs at Baptist Health South Florida in the past six months have failed drug tests, said Thomas Moore, who works in the hospital system's employment program.

All said they were taking nothing more than over-counter diet pills and were stunned to hear their urine was laced with controlled substances. "This one woman was crying, saying this hospital job was what she wanted to spend her life doing," Moore said.

She brought Moore her Brazilian diet pills -- yellow pills to take in the morning, orange pills to take at night. Moore sent them to Robert White of the federally certified DSI Laboratories in Fort Myers.

White told The Herald the yellow pills contained amphetamines. The orange pills contained tranquilizers and a generic Prozac, apparently to bring users down from the jitters caused by amphetamines and allow them to sleep at night.

The main culprit is a pill called Emagrece Sim - supposedly an "all-natural" pill. It seems that no one can be sure exactly what's in these pills. The claims are of 20-30 pound per month weight loss.

Let the buyer beware! I'll leave the final word to one poor user of these Brazilian pills:

After she learned what the pills contained, she stopped taking them. "I felt very bad. I slept for a week."
Most versions of the pills come in five levels, depending on how much weight a person wants to lose. One woman who lost almost 20 pounds in a month said that after she went from Level 4 to Level 5,

"I was really hyper," but when she took the nighttime pill, she couldn't stay awake and fell into a deep sleep at 8:30.

Suspicious, she had the pills tested and discovered the amphetamine-tranquilizer combination.

"This is really big," the woman said. "People in medical institutions, police officers. Everybody is taking these pills and nobody knows what's in them."