Some of you were still playing with Hot Wheels when anabolic steroids became neighbors with Valium and cocaine as far as the government was concerned. I vividly remember being part of the story that Michael Zumpano told on HMR of the reps from Organon and Searle and other drug companies pulling up to Gold's Gym in Venice and dispensing gear to those of us who ordered it. How we went from hormones being considered an innocuous item that could be purchased directly from the drug companies to being a scheduled narcotic is as mystifying as it is insane. For those of you too young to know, or too old to remember, I thought it might be a good idea to give you all a little primer as to how possession of testosterone - a naturally occurring hormone in your body - went from no one caring to getting you five years in federal prison.
The great German chancellor Otto Von Bismarck once said that "laws are like sausages, it's better not to see them being made." In the case of scheduling anabolic steroids, nothing can be truer. The actual process to criminalize and schedule steroids was a deeply involved and convoluted process that amounts to perhaps the greatest abuse of power and obfuscation of due process I have yet come to know. As far as I know, there is only one place to learn the details of how Congress bamboozled the public in passing the Anabolic Steroid Control Act, and that is in Rick Collins' book, Legal Muscle: Anabolics in America (available at www.teamlegalmuscle.com). Hence, I will be quoting liberally from it. Even if you have no interest in steroids and the law, the very notion of Congress acting in the so-called "public interest" in scheduling anabolic steroids is as sanctimonious as it is invidious and every tax-paying American ought to know how it happened. Bear in mind though, this is an extremely abbreviated version of the story. The actual process occupies hundreds and hundreds of pages of Congressional transcript testimony. Rick Collins is about the only guy who ever read it all. From his painstaking view of the matter, the following is a brief summation of the greatest travesty to ever befall an adult male in America.
.....During the mid-eighties, anabolic steroids were classified as prescription medicines, required to be prescribed and dispensed by licensed physicians. Their federal regulation came under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Eventually, after much banning and warnings against their use by the athletic communities, the press began reporting widespread public usage.
Members of subcommittees in both the House and Senate drafted bills and scheduled hearings to address the issue. In 1987, a House bill was introduced making it a felony to distribute steroids without a valid prescription. The next year Ben Johnson tested positive for Stanozolol (winstrol) at the 1988 Olympics in Soul, south Korea, and was stripped of his gold medal. The subsequent outrage piqued and Senator Joe Biden (now Vice President Biden) introduced a similar Senate bill. President Reagan signed the resulting legislation as part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The new law punished traffickers of anabolic steroids for non-medical reasons with up to three years in prison (up to six years if sold to minors under 18 years). Subsequently, a new bill was proposed to create the "Anabolic Steroid Restriction Act of 1989" which would criminalize using the mail to transport or sell steroids.
Since the new bills and laws imposed no federal controls on the manufacture and prescription of anabolics, they didn't prevent steroid products from being diverted to the black market. For this reason, a few doctors began suggesting controlled substance status for anabolic steroids, and for some reason, got the attention of Congress.
The process by which drugs are to be added to the controlled substances schedules falls under the authority of the Attorney General. The factors to consider as to the drug in question include:
(1) Its actual or relative potential for abuse.
(2) Scientific evidence of its pharmacological effect, if known.
(3) The state of current scientific knowledge regarding the drug or other substance.
(4) Its history and current pattern of abuse.
(5) The scope, duration, and significance of abuse.
(6) What, if any, risk there is to the public health.
(7) Its psychic or physiological dependence liability.
(8) Whether the substance is an immediate precursor of a substance already controlled under this subchapter.
After review, John Lawn, Administrator of the DEA, concluded that anabolic steroids should not be made controlled substances. Health and Human Services Secretary Otis Bowen agreed. Neither agency viewed anabolic steroids as meeting the criteria for a controlled substance.
At this point, a new law had criminalized steroid trafficking and the appropriate agencies had concluded that scheduling anabolics was inappropriate. The issue would seem to have been resolved. But members of Congress, it would be seen, had other ideas.
In July of 1988, the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Committee on the Judiciary convened to consider a bill to amend the Controlled Substances Act to add methandrostenolone (dianabol) as a Schedule I controlled substance.
The hearing provided an opportunity for the legislators to hear what the experts thought about the actual health dangers and the idea of scheduling steroids. Charles Yesalis, Sc.D., professor of health and human development at Penn State University and probably the world's foremost expert on steroids, repeatedly stressed to the subcommittee that the medical side effects were mostly temporary, and presented a balanced and objective assessment:
"Steroids do have a medical use. From an epidemiological point of view of the health dangers, I am much more concerned about heroin; I am much more concerned about cocaine; I am much more concerned about cigarettes than anabolic steroids. This is not to say steroids are not potentially dangerous rather, from what we know currently, I am more concerned about the other drugs - and you could likely add the abuse of alcohol to that list - than anabolic steroids."
Regarding the issue of steroids' addictive potential, Dr. David Bever, an associate professor of health education at George Mason University who had recently conducted a study about steroid usage among bodybuilders and power lifters in the D.C. area, said: "We did not find that it was habituating..."
Clearly, the experts from the scientific community were lending little support for scheduling. But what would the DEA have to say? Gene Haislip, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, was called to testify. But rather than supporting the bill, Mr. Haislip flat-out opposed it on behalf of DEA. He pointed out the inappropriateness of steroid hormones in the Controlled Substances Act, stating, "The Controlled Substances Act is built entirely and exclusively around drugs which are principally psychoactive and are abused almost exclusively by virtue and because of that property. All of these drugs can be described either as narcotics, stimulants, depressants or hallucinogens." The DEA position, he made clear, was to continue its opposition to scheduling steroids, stating that the DEA was not "the appropriate body to enforce any measures of this kind."
In April of the following year, the Senate conducted its own investigation. The Senate's Committee on the Judiciary addressed "The Steroid Abuse Problem in America, Focusing on the Use of Steroids in College and Professional Football Today." As the designated voice of the American Medical Association (AMA), Dr. Edward Langston had come to acknowledge that steroid abuse is a significant problem but to oppose scheduling. The AMA opposed scheduling because "abuse of steroids does not lead to the physical or psychological dependence as is required for scheduling...." Dr. Langston also pointed out that other effective and appropriate approaches to the problem existed, including the recently enacted Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.
Dr. Yesalis once again gave an objective review, and explicitly recommended against scare tactics, saying, " increased death, probability of death or morbidity could be taking place, but people apparently are not dropping like flies. And I think we have to be careful not to lose further credibility."
It wasn't what Rep. Dan Lungren wanted to hear. After sparring with Dr. Yesalis, the congressman went after Dr. Bever. The manner in which politicians who knew next to nothing about the subject matter were attacking qualified experts was becoming...suspicious.
What Drs. Yesalis and Bever got was nothing compared to what was given to Dr. Langston of the AMA. The physician had barely finished his presentation when the onslaught began. Dr. Katz, the psychiatrist whose flawed work had been criticized by Dr. Yesalis, took the first swing by declaring the AMA statement as voiced by Dr. Langston "shocking" and "ridiculous." Those were compliments compared to what Senator Biden had to say. It was painful to read, and must have been even worse to watch as the doctor was forced to defend himself against a skilled inquisitor. Was the AMA position weak? Probably. Still, something was going on. Was it coincidence that only the witnesses whose testimony presented speed bumps in the path of scheduling were castigated and ridiculed? It was evident that Senator Biden, along with the subcommittees of both the House and the Senate, had a certain game plan in mind.
Congress was able to call witnesses at the various hearings whose stories would help support the criminalization idea. Former Olympic track and field athlete Diane Williams testified about the masculinisation she suffered due to steroid use, breaking down and unable to continue after confessing to sprouting facial hair and the growth of her clitoris to "embarrassing proportions." Steve Courson, former player for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, offered articulate but questionable testimony by suggesting - without any basis in fact -- that his heart problems were linked to his past steroid use. Pat Croce, conditioning coach for the Philadelphia 76er's and Philadelphia Flyers, insisted "steroids must be considered a controlled substance, no different than cocaine. Steroids, cocaine; the same connotation." In contrast to Dr. Yesalis, Mr. Croce went on to vigorously tout scare tactics, in addition to criminal prosecutions, as the best approach.
It was Kenneth Kashin, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, who spoke the language that Congress was looking to hear, opining that "steroid use can cause an addiction with similarities to alcohol, opiate and cocaine addiction." He talked about "dangerous criminal-like behavior while intoxicated on anabolic steroids" and individuals who have "lost control of their behavior."
What motivated Congress to ignore the advice of the experts and forge ahead with scheduling? Page after page of congressional testimony focuses on two issues and two issues only.
The primary issue: the unfair advantage that steroid-enhanced professional and top-level athletes have over those who don't use steroids. That's why the great majority of witnesses at the hearings weren't physicians, pharmacologists or addiction specialists; instead, they were athletes, coaches, trainers and sports officials, mostly from professional and college football.
The secondary consideration of Congress was the message that steroid use in top-level sports sends to our youth. This consideration surfaces repeatedly, expressed by numerous witnesses and legislators alike. The focus of Sen. Biden in his opening remarks was on the "stars on the athletic field as the role models in our schools, in our colleges, and in our lives." While some health concerns were expressed about teen use of steroids, the greater concern was for the demoralizing effect that steroid use by sports stars would have on teens.
Given the obvious predisposition of Congress, it is questionable how objectively the legislators listened to the health risks information. It's difficult to imagine that they could have been impartial, given their agenda and motivations. The hyperbolic testimony about health risks and the shaky "hypothesis" about addictive potential upon which Congress chose to rely seem like icing to disguise the true dish they were serving to America. With all due respect to Diane Williams, her unfortunate experience hardly justifies railroading the criminalization of steroids for adult men. As for the addiction "hypothesis," Congress knew that the only way to get a substance scheduled was to establish its potential for abuse and dependency. However flimsy and unsubstantiated, the theory was just what Congress needed as the "missing ingredient" to justify scheduling.
So, there you have it. Thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans - not kids, but mature adult males - have been arrested, handcuffed, searched, arraigned, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced for the personal use of anabolic steroids. Virtually none of them have been Olympic athletes or NFL players. They're not cheating in sports; they're not even playing sports. Yet they are being vacuumed up into the criminal justice system by a law that was never enacted to address them. Hundreds of transcript pages were devoted to promoting fair play at the elite and collegiate levels. Nobody ever mentioned the idea that the thirty-five-year-old guy using a moderate amount of juice to enhance the effects of his training would be arrested and prosecuted. No teens are looking up to him. He's not cheating any other athletes. He's not bothering anybody.
In the zeal of Congress to solve the problem of athletic cheating, the typical mature adult male steroid user was turned into a criminal desperado, and remains so today, by a law that was passed with barely a thought to the issue.
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