Written by Rick Collins, Esq
31 October 2019

 

 

 

MD’s Legal Muscle

By Rick Collins, J.D.

 

Steroids Users: The New American Criminals?

 

Q: Does the typical United States steroid user match the profile of traditional criminal types?

 

A:I had the privilege of working as part of a research team in 2005, seeking to study the demographics, motivations and patterns of use of adult, non-medical anabolic steroid users. A psychology graduate student named Jason Cohen, now Dr. Cohen, had asked me to help bolster trust in promoting a planned online survey. I signed on to the project, recommending the survey on my website steroidlaw.com, here in MD and in online forums, and I recruited two brilliant co-researchers: University of South Florida psychology professor Jack Darkes, Ph.D. and fellow MD columnist Dan Gwartney, M.D. We drew our nearly 2,000 male, adult, non-medical, U.S. steroid users from a larger sample of 2,663 people from 81 countries— the largest in-depth survey of this population ever conducted. The results were published in 2007 in the peer-reviewed Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.1

 

Our data is now a decade old. But in 2015, a new research team conducted a survey similar to ours, but recruiting 231 male respondents who met the inclusion criteria from online forums and steroid websites. The findings, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings as “Heavy Testosterone Use Among Bodybuilders: An Uncommon Cohort of Illicit Substance Users,”2 show that not much has changed. In 2005, our typical subject was a white male about 30 years old, highly educated, gainfully employed and earning an above-average income in a white-collar occupation. In 2015, the Mayo Clinic researchers found the typical subject to still be a white male over 25 years old with an above-average educational level and income. The biggest motivator for use was, and still is, increasing muscle mass. Average start of use now, as then, is after the age of majority— we found that 94 percent did not start using until age 18 or older; the new study found 93 percent started at 18 or older and 63.6 percent began using after age 22. Even the average weekly dosages in the two studies are pretty close, somewhere between 600 and 800 milligrams.

           

However, the Mayo Clinic researchers looked at something new, and it’s worth noting. They looked at criminal convictions. Are steroid users prone to anti-social behavior or other criminal conduct requiring the intervention of the criminal justice system? Non-medical steroid users are criminals by definition under current laws, being that it’s a crime to possess anabolic steroids without a valid medical prescription. But are these users the types of “criminals” who might regularly commit other crimes? “Twenty-two of 216 men (10.2%) reported being convicted of or pleading no contest to a crime,” the researchers note, “with 20 (90.9%) of those occurring before starting use of testosterone.” Of the 10.2 percent, half (5.1%) were felonies.

           

So, what does that say? Well, 8.6 percent of the overall U.S. population has a felony conviction,3 so at only 5.1 percent, there are fewer convicted felons among steroid users than among the general public. The contrast in percentage would seem to cast doubt on the claim that steroids “cause” violent criminal behavior, or that studies limited to steroid-using prison populations have anything to do with steroid users in free society (that sort of research “selection bias” seems suspiciously designed to attain agenda-driven findings). Violent prisoners typically use various drugs besides steroids, may be less educated and less affluent, and may have very different motivations for use and psychological profiles than the well-educated, higher-income individuals who comprise the population of typical non-medical steroid users who will never find themselves in lockup.

 

Significantly, the Mayo Clinic researchers found that of those steroid users who were convicted or pleaded no contest to crimes, nearly 91 percent had their criminal justice problems before starting steroid use. Curiously, only two out of 216 respondents reported a criminal justice problem once they started using steroids. As Dr. Darkes notes, the data supports “that anabolic steroids do not ‘cause’ crime, given the fact that, of the small percentage of users who had been convicted, a vast majority were convicted prior to initiating use.”

           

But is steroid use the cure for crime? Probably not; the factors correlated with steroid use— higher income and better education— also make people less prone to crime. “It has long been known that crime rates increase along with ice cream sales,” Dr. Cohen notes, “but any causal relationship is an illusion. People just buy more ice cream in the summer, which is also when crime peaks.” So, the relationship of steroids to law-abiding behavior is likely one of correlation, not cause. Of course, dedication in the gym— with or without steroid use— provides a structured activity that keeps folks off the streets and leaves less time for mischief. And we can all agree that’s a very good thing.

 

Rick Collins, JD, CSCS [http://www.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, 2017. All rights reserved. For informational purposes only, not to be construed as legal or medical advice.]

 

References:

           

1. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2131752/.

2. www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(15)00890-3/abstract.

3. www.libertariannews.org/2014/06/05/what-percentage-of-us-adult-population-that-has-a-felony-conviction/.

 

 

 

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