In July, TikTok ran an ad that could have doubled as evidence in a drug bust. In it, a hand rattled a bottle of white pills at the camera while smooth jazz singer Sade purred, “Is it a crime?” The label was obscured, but the pills were stamped with the code for opioid painkiller Percocet. Other videos from the account touted ADHD medication Vyvanse and trash bags stuffed with boxes for other controlled drugs that contained the painkiller opium, a Schedule II narcotic; opioid derivatives like codeine, a Schedule III narcotic; and anxiety medication Xanax, a Schedule IV benzo.

The same TikTok account ran 27 similar ads across the social network in July targeting users interested in “health & wellness,” mostly in Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland. The sale of such medications without a prescription is illegal in all three countries.

TikTok has over the last month hosted a series of ads from accounts pushing illegal street drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and cannabis as well as controlled substances like Adderall, Xanax and Valium. That’s part of a black-market advertising bonanza on the social media site, where sellers are now hawking fake GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and experimental Chinese peptides alongside knockoff luxury handbags and sneakers.

TikTok prohibits the promotion or sale of illegal drugs, controlled drugs and drug paraphernalia. But over the last two weeks, a TikTok account operated by Forbes was served ads from 21 accounts pushing street drugs like cocaine and controlled medications like Xanax.

Take one such TikTok advertiser, named ScarfaceWorldwide (a reference to the Hollywood gangster movie). It bought ads targeting users in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands who TikTok categorized as interested in topics like education, babies and shopping.

The pinned video on the ScarfaceWorldwide account shows a condensed brick of white powder labeled “Coke,” with an image of a snowflake and an arrow to a mobile phone emoji. The account’s bio includes a link to the messaging service Telegram, which featured a menu for cocaine where quantities of up to a kilo were for sale. The account also offered controlled drugs like OxyContin and cannabis for sale with payment via cryptocurrencies.

While TikTok’s ad library does not show ads served to Americans, this account indicates that some sellers are also targeting U.S. users. ScarfaceWorldwide’s profile states, “Est. 2018 | Licensed Distro | Shipping 50 States + International. DM for Telegram Menu.” Several videos from the account show bales of packaged cannabis with on-screen text stating “Biggest in Cali,” “Biggest in LA,” and “Trap101” (trapping is a slang term for dealing drugs). The account says it ships to all states by concealing drugs in furniture boxes.

When Forbes reached out to the company for comment, TikTok banned most of the advertisers and pages we flagged, many of which were posting about and advertising street drugs and controlled medications until earlier this week. New ads from other accounts pushing drugs continue to appear on TikTok.

Accounts like @LONDON.COKE.PLUG and @london_plug_coke_bud_ket continued to operate until Forbes flagged them to TikTok this week.

TikTok charges for every ad that runs on its app. Revenues for ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, hit an estimated $186 billion in 2025. Corporate filings for its U.K., Europe and Latin America business show that it made $9.1 billion in revenue in these regions and turned a profit for the first time last year.

TikTok says that of all the videos removed for violating its policies around regulated goods and services in the first quarter, it removed 99.8% of them before they were reported by users. It banned a total of 16 million advertisers in the same period. Some of the accounts tracked by Forbes had been active since at least April.

Have a tip about TikTok? Contact Iain Martin at iain.martin@forbes.com or on Signal at +1 (646) 739-6427.

British, Canadian and U.S. publications have reported in the past that TikTok had hosted content promoting drug abuse, while Scottish news website Glasgow Live reported in April that TikTok ads were pushing controlled medications like Xanax and diazepam that are known to be abused and can be addictive. (TikTok took down all the accounts Glasgow Live flagged as well.)

Other social networks have also faced scrutiny over drug ads. In 2024, Meta faced a federal investigation over publishing ads for similar street drugs and controlled medications, according to The Wall Street Journal (like TikTok, Meta also does not allow illegal drug ads; the status of the investigation is unknown). Google agreed to pay $500 million in 2011 to settle a Department of Justice investigation into allegations that it had allowed Canadian pharmacies to target Americans with ads for controlled prescription drugs.

Since 2023, TikTok has run a Commercial Content Library that shows all the ads published on the platform in the U.K. and Europe. But it is impossible to quantify how many ads were bought on TikTok to promote illegal goods because common search terms for street drugs render no results, and TikTok temporarily locked out Forbes reporters with a message claiming “spam or misuse is suspected” after only a handful of searches. TikTok didn’t answer questions about why reporters were locked out.

When TikTok takes down ads for content violations, it often leaves a record of the ad in this library. But many of the accounts that pushed drug-related ads to the TikTok account operated by Forbes do not appear there at all. Others had videos removed for unspecified “content violations” but continued to buy new ads to push drug content. TikTok says it is legally required to remove ads from the ad library when it bans the advertiser behind them but failed to answer repeated questions why accounts with live ads did not appear in the library.

The European Commission issued a preliminary ruling in May 2025 that ByteDance had breached the Digital Services Act because TikTok’s ad library couldn’t be searched “comprehensively” and failed to disclose enough information about advertisers. In December, TikTok agreed to a resolution, agreeing to provide full context for ads, update its library within 24 hours of an ad running and introduce additional search capabilities.

There appear to be many more dealers operating on TikTok that have not bought ads. Searches on the app found more than 30 accounts that contained references to illegal street drugs in their account name, profile bios and videos. Many of the accounts invite users to message them for “party supplies” and share a phone number, Telegram account name or link to the messaging app. Forbes contacted several of the accounts and received menus of street drugs and controlled medications available for sale. Several accounts with the same handle and photo as those on TikTok were also active on Instagram. There was no record of them buying ads in Meta’s ad archive.

Accounts like @LONDON.COKE.PLUG and @london_plug_coke_bud_ket continued to operate until Forbes flagged them to TikTok this week, despite the company operating a vast algorithmic machine that analyzes every account and post for content violations. TikTok also has 4,596 human moderators covering the European Union alone, according to its 2025 transparency report .

TikTok’s failure to take down accounts promoting drug abuse while taking money from dealers to advertise narcotics could land its Beijing-based parent ByteDance back under the glare of regulators and lawmakers in the United States and Europe.

TikTok has faced prolonged scrutiny from Congress over concerns that the Chinese government could strong-arm its parent ByteDance into providing sensitive American user data or manipulating the powerful For You recommendation algorithm for political ends. A series of 2022 and 2023 Forbes investigations revealed that ByteDance had used the TikTok app to spy on Forbes reporters’ locations , stored creators’ Social Security numbers in China and pushed pro-China propaganda to users in Europe .

Those fears resulted in a law passed in April 2024 that required ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a ban. Upon returning to office, President Trump extended the law’s deadline multiple times until a deal was finally reached. TikTok is now operated in the U.S. as a joint venture owned by Oracle, buyout investor Silver Lake, Abu Dhabi fund MGX and ByteDance. But the company continues to have broad oversight of the app and is responsible for its commercial operations. That includes all advertising globally.

In Europe, TikTok has already incurred more than $1 billion in fines for breaches of rules around user data and privacy. It faces a number of ongoing investigations over its addictive design and alleged failures to protect minors or provide data access to researchers. TikTok disputed the addictive design allegations, said it would work with regulators on child safety and said it allows data access for researchers but EU rules on this were unclear.

The EU’s Digital Services Act, which went into effect in 2024, enables European regulators to impose tough fines that can total up to 6% of global revenue for large tech companies in breach of its rules. “Transparency in online advertising — who pays and how audiences are targeted — is essential to safeguarding the public interest,” wrote Henna Virkkunen, the EU commissioner for tech and security, in May 2025 when the investigation into TikTok’s advertising was disclosed.

While TikTok might seem unaware that accounts and advertisers are pushing street drugs and controlled medications, its users have clocked it. Beneath the ad with the Percocet bottle and Sade’s 1986 smooth jazz, a TikTok commenter named Hana offered the platform some insightful legal analysis: “Yes, it’s a criiimeee.”