MD'S Legal Muscle | Sourcing Steroids
MD Legal Muscle
Sourcing Steroids
By Rick Collins, Esq.
Q: How are most gearheads getting their steroid supplies these days?
A: A recent article in The Physician and Sportsmedicine looked at how anabolic steroids are procured by bodybuilders and other athletes for non-medical purposes.1 The authors correctly note how prior to the enactment of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 (ASCA), non-medical use was “often supervised by physicians who supplied the drugs to the athletes, ensuring [quality control and monitoring of side effects]. During this time, there was no need for a black market or underground laboratories (UGL) since these drugs were readily available from health professionals.” While black market products may have existed before the ASCA, the criminalization of steroid possession created “an immense demand for black market products.”
The authors cite a survey of 1,955 adult steroid users conducted by Jay Cohen, Jack Darkes, Dan Gwartney and me, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.2 We found, over a decade ago, that the Internet had become the major source for obtaining anabolic steroids, with over half of our sample (52.7%) having purchased their gear online. I suspect that proportion is much higher now, with social media being a major source in addition to traditional websites. We found that 16.7 percent got their steroids from local dealer sources, another 15 percent from friends or training partners, less than 7 percent from physician’s prescriptions and less than 6 percent from bringing the steroids back from a foreign country.
As far as the types of products that are out there, the article divides today’s steroid black market into four categories.
1. Counterfeit products of legitimate brands. These are fraudulent knock-offs of known pharmaceutical products, which are made under unsupervised quality control conditions and may be underdosed or contaminated.
2. UGL products. These openly black-market product lines are launched by entrepreneurs who build a buzz around the brand. Typically made from raw powders imported from China, “home brewed,” and affixed with a label, these products can have the same quality control problems as counterfeits. (I have represented numerous clients in federal cases involving UGL products. Some were meticulous about quality control; others not so much at all.)
3. Foreign pharmaceutical products. These products are produced in Asia or Mexico under more traditional quality control conditions (historically, some were labeled as veterinary products).
4. Diverted FDA-approved products. Diverted by physicians or pharmacists, these products once comprised the bulk of the black market (pre-1990) but are now probably the hardest to obtain due to the legal (licensing and criminal) risks to the health care providers.
The authors cite two disturbing studies: one found that more than 80 percent of bodybuilding drugs seized by Swiss customs did not contain the claimed substance in the proper amount, while the other found that nearly 50 percent of the counterfeited steroids on the Brazilian black market contained no active drug. They acknowledge that legislation like the various U.S. steroid “control” acts have led to “the rise of inferior quality drugs flooding black markets worldwide. The lack of official supervision of facilities and manufacturing processes of underground laboratories endangers the health of [steroid] users.” That’s right: governmental efforts to decrease the non-medical use of steroids have put steroid users into greater danger. Nor have such efforts curtailed usage. Steroid authority Bill Llewellyn notes, “The size of the black market has only increased since the ASCA. Demand has continued to rise among traditional consumers (athletes and bodybuilders), and increasingly, more casual weightlifters, too. These drugs have been getting more popular, not less.”3 I totally concur.
The authors also present the alarming data that less than 50 percent of respondents to a 2005 survey sought out information from health care providers. Many of my clients tell me that their primary care physicians are clueless and judgmental in their views about anabolic steroids in general, so they rely on Internet steroid boards. “Online ‘bodybuilding forums’ abound with individuals devoid of any medical background who portray themselves as steroid experts and provide false advice to other users with the potential for serious health complications,” the authors note. Indeed, it’s a sad reality that unqualified laypersons dole out dangerous advice. It’s also concerning, however, that as a result of the criminalization of non-medical steroid use, which drove use underground and subtracted the medical community from the equation, many physicians are ignorant about non-medical steroid use. So, today’s black market users must too often choose between online “gurus” and poorly informed medical doctors.
Rick Collins, Esq., CSCS [https://steroidlaw.com/] is the lawyer that members of the bodybuilding community and nutritional supplement industry turn to when they need legal help or representation. [© Rick Collins, 2019. All rights reserved. For informational purposes only, not to be construed as legal or medical advice.]
References:
1. Fink J et al. “Anabolic-androgenic steroids: procurement and administration practices of doping athletes,” The Phys and Sportsmed 2018; 47:1. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00913847.2018.1526626
2. Cohen J et al. “A league of their own: demographics, motivations and patterns of use of 1,955 male adult non-medical anabolic steroid users in the United States,” J Int Soc Sports Nutr2007; 4:12. jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-4-12
3. Personal correspondence (3/13/19).
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