Black-Market Silicone Injections Are a Felony in Nevada

In the era before modern implants, unregulated liquid-silicone injections were marketed as a shortcut to a showgirl figure — and they maimed the women who got them, including Las Vegas dancers and performers whose bodies were their livelihood. The injections migrated, hardened, and caused disfigurement and chronic illness. In 1975, the Nevada Legislature responded with a statute that reads like few others in the criminal code: a felony ban on a specific substance entering the human body.

NRS 202.248 provides: "Except for use in the treatment of retinal detachment, it is unlawful for a person to: (a) Inject any liquid silicone substance into the human body; or (b) Sell or offer for sale in this state any liquid silicone substance for the purpose of injection into the human body." The lone exception — retinal detachment surgery — reflects the one legitimate medical use recognized at the time. Everything else is a category D felony carrying one to four years in prison.

Fifty years on, the statute is anything but dormant. Illegal cosmetic "pumping parties" — where unlicensed injectors administer silicone in hotel rooms and private homes — still occur, and Nevada prosecutors have a dedicated felony ready for them, typically stacked with charges for practicing medicine without a license. One housekeeping note: this is the statute that weird-law listicles accidentally cite when they mean the shoe-fitting X-ray ban. That's NRS 202.245. This one, 202.248, is the one with real teeth.