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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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0 7 - 1 1 - 2 0 0 5 STEROIDS: JUST CLICK AND BUY
Wrestling The Octopus
By JOSH KOVNER & PAUL DOYLE Ever hear of Ben Gottlieb? Allow us to introduce him. He played college football at Central. Ordered big quantities of steroids online. From China. Get to know him. His case is emblematic of a growing problem that brings together two worlds. The hard-to-control Internet. And the rogue operator in a foreign country that is all too happy to provide illegal steroids. To anyone. Of any age. No questions asked. It's anonymous. It's easy. It's fast. And there's not much U.S. law enforcement can do to stop it. Ben Gottlieb says he was a college freshman when he had his first taste of anabolic steroids. Gottlieb, then a football player at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, felt his body transforming. He wanted more, so he turned to the fastest growing place for steroids - the Internet. Gottlieb and his four roommates became regular patrons of a steroids site that appeared to be based in China. For more than three years, Gottlieb used anabolic steroids, banned in organized sports at every level. He packed on at least 65 pounds of muscle. He was listed on the 2001 Central Connecticut football roster at 6 feet, 265 pounds. That same year, his name also appeared on the police blotter. He was convicted of assault after he and two of his friends ambushed and beat a man at the Brickyard Cafe in Hartford. Law officers would later suspect that "roid rage" could have been a factor in the attack. But it wasn't until the spring of 2003 that federal agents intercepted a massive shipment of steroids addressed to Gottlieb at his off-campus apartment on New Britain's Allen Street. And it wasn't until this past August, after a long and twisting pursuit by police and prosecutors, that Gottlieb was finally convicted and sentenced - to probation. Gottlieb is a case in point for law enforcement officials who are increasingly frustrated by the growing importation of illegal steroids. The Internet provides such easy access and anonymity to both buyers and sellers, who are often located in countries where steroids are legal. But it also makes the drug trafficking that much harder to trace and control. "Like tentacles coming in and out of the octopus," said Thomas McGinnis, the top pharmacist in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "When we drill down, we find that the ISP [Internet service provider] might be in China and the pharmacy might be in Poland. And some are invisible to Google searches." "The challenge is huge and daunting for law enforcement," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District, vice chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which has held hearings on steroid-related issues. Shays predicted only "marginal" success on getting a handle on the problem. Gottlieb's story has all the classic elements: the progression from hand-to-hand deals to the Internet, large amounts of steroids flowing from a foreign website beyond the reach of American officers, the extraordinary drain on police resources just to snag a single, obscure player in the online black market. U.S. Customs agents at the mail facility at JFK International Airport seized six packages from China addressed to Gottlieb. The packages contained 14,000 pills and 160 vials of injectable steroids. An undercover officer posing as a mailman attempted to complete the delivery, but Gottlieb left for Florida, where his father lives. Eighteen months passed before he was even brought back to Connecticut. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of criminal attempt to possess steroids with intent to sell. The prosecution, stressing the large amounts and potentially serious health consequences of the drug, pressed for two years' imprisonment. The defense argued that with Victor Conte, the central figure in the national Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative steroid scandal, receiving only a four-month federal prison term, two years for a small fish like Gottlieb was ridiculous. Gottlieb would receive no jail time. Superior Court Judge Susan B. Handy gave him a suspended sentence and placed him on probation. The judge said Gottlieb was stupid to do what he did, that his conduct was serious and that steroid abuse was "extraordinarily dangerous.'' But she noted that the prosecution of Internet steroid cases is in its infancy, and there was little precedent to guide her. When a contrite Gottlieb, now 28, told Handy he was sorry and that, "I'm not the person I was two years ago,'' he could have been speaking literally. Since stopping steroids, he'd shed the 65 pounds. Despite numerous attempts, Gottlieb would not consent to be interviewed for this story. Gottlieb's experience with Internet steroids is being repeated with alarming frequency around the country. Experts said in interviews that the Internet has made steroids widely accessible for the next generation of users. The temptation for a young athlete to indulge in steroids and the ease and anonymity offered by the Internet make an insidious combination, law officers, regulators and health experts said. "This isn't a problem that's out there somewhere," said Donald Hooton, who attributes the suicide in 2003 of his 17-year-old son, Taylor, a Texas athlete to the effects of steroid abuse. "Parents, it may be going on in your child's bedroom. It's always been easy and prevalent in every gym in America. Now, kids can just sit at their computer terminal to get the stuff." If it were up to Roberto Diaz, Gottlieb would be in jail for his admitted conduct. "It's a dangerous drug,'' said Diaz, a Connecticut state police detective, seasoned narcotics cop and lead investigator in the Gottlieb case. "These young people - look at them. They feel no harm is going to come to them. What they're doing is destroying their bodies." Unique Problems Federal agents, big-city prosecutors and drug regulators feel the same way Diaz does. But Internet steroids pose unique problems. Most of the steroid-peddling sites are based in Asia and Europe, making tracking the source of the drugs difficult. There, steroid production, sale and use are unregulated. Here, steroids are a Schedule III controlled substance in the same category as prescription painkillers and sedatives. "This presents major hurdles. We try to work with foreign governments, but in order to extradite [an offender], the conduct has to be a crime in both countries. And these sites hop from country to country,'' said Douglas Coleman, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. The sites can blink on and off. When law officers get close, they shut down and reopen somewhere else on the Internet. Lured by slick websites and bad advice, buyers can in a matter of minutes place an order. But no one is there to vouch for the quality or the purity of what arrives in the mail. "So many different hands in so many different places have touched this stuff; you have absolutely no idea what you're getting - and that's scary," said Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. "Especially with injectables, the dangers are just unbelievable.'' Catizone's group represents state regulatory boards and helps law-enforcement by identifying rogue Internet pharmacies that peddle steroids and prescription narcotics. In conventional drug investigations, law officers smash the distribution ring, grab the middleman, and squeeze him to try to get to the source. That doesn't work in Internet steroid cases, because the source might be a chameleon-like website that once was based in China but no longer exists. Law officers are often left with no choice but to converge on the user. "With neighborhood coke or heroin rings, there's usually a local middleman. With steroids, there's not much middleman involvement. It becomes very difficult for us to prosecute,'' said Bridget Brennan, director of the New York City special narcotics prosecutor division. Hundreds of thousands of illegal prescription drugs, including steroids, stream into this country daily. "For every one we seize, 100 packages [of imported drugs of all types] must get by," Brennan said. Still, law enforcement has had its share of successes. In April, the DEA, working with an alphabet soup of other federal enforcement agencies, smashed an Internet-based drug ring that was delivering up to 2.5 million doses of steroids, narcotics and amphetamines to tens of thousands of customers monthly in the U.S. and abroad. More than 20 people were arrested. The ring was centered in Philadelphia and headed by two Temple University students from India. The DEA pursues about 100 steroid cases a year, according to Coleman. "It's a dangerous substance," Brennan said. "We regulate it, like drunken driving. And you have no clue what you're getting from these sites. "This isn't Tylenol in child-resistant bottles. The stuff is being shipped, hidden in computer components. Who knows what it's diluted with and what other substances are present.'' The Steroid Menace Mary Rose Palmese, the veteran Connecticut prosecutor who handled the Gottlieb case, shares Brennan's view of the steroid menace. In an interview after Gottlieb's sentencing hearing, she spoke about why she recommended to the judge that Gottlieb serve two years in prison, out of a maximum sentence of five years. Palmese said there were an awful lot of steroids involved, and that "if we were looking at these kinds of amounts of prescription drugs, there's no question we would be talking jail time.'' She said she was also influenced by the effort and commitment devoted to the case by Diaz, the lead investigator, and the other law officers. She said she was troubled by Gottlieb's prior conviction in the bar brawl, which she saw as a reflection on his demeanor, and by the fact that Gottlieb's behavior - using a banned substance to bulk up and enhance his performance - was sending the wrong message to young athletes. But Gottlieb was charged with "intent to distribute,'' and there was no evidence he was dealing the steroids. "I came to see that [Gottlieb] was getting it all to share with his buddies" and not dealing on campus, she said. At trial, she would have had to convince a jury that Gottlieb had intended to sell the steroids for profit - the key element in a drug-distribution case. She said the proof wasn't there. And though she said she is still stunned by the sheer amount of steroids involved in the case, she said Gottlieb's lawyer, Gerald Klein, "kind of convinced me that people who use it have to take megadoses of this stuff." In the end, she decided not to force a trial, and agreed to a plea bargain. Under the terms of the deal, Gottlieb pleaded guilty with the understanding that the prosecution was seeking a jail term of up to two years, and the defense had the right to argue for no jail time at the sentencing hearing. The outcome would be up to the discretion of the judge. Klein, who has been practicing criminal law for 30 years, and his associate, Damon Kirschbaum, boned up on a steroid defense by reading Rick Collins' book, "Legal Muscle.'' Collins, a Long Island-based lawyer, has carved out a niche defending steroid users. His book provides a state-by-state breakdown of steroid statutes, points out the inconsistencies, and has become the bible of defense lawyers in steroids cases. In his other research, Klein learned that users can take up to 50 pills in a single dose. "Apparently, they gobble this stuff up," Klein said. Then, in July, the Gottlieb defense was handed a gift. Conte, the founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, charged by the federal government with money laundering and distributing steroids to more than 30 pro baseball, football and track and field stars, pleaded guilty in exchange for a four-month prison sentence. Another figure in the BALCO case, Greg Anderson, who was the personal trainer for San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds, would receive six months in prison. The Conte case, which began in 2003, propelled performance-enhancing drugs into the national spotlight, raised questions about alleged steroid use by Bonds, Jason Giambi and others, forced Major League Baseball to tighten its drug-testing policy, and led to a congressional hearing on steroid use in baseball, broadcast live on television. "And they wanted to give our guy two years? It was nonsense," Klein said in an interview after the hearing. Still, Klein was worried. So was Gottlieb. "I'm just real nervous,'' Gottlieb said when it was his turn to address the judge, according to a transcript of the hearing. "I just want you to know I'm not the same person I was two years ago. Basically, I'm 65 pounds lighter and a lot more mature. ... I want you to know that I understand what I did was wrong, and it's just not a part of my life anymore.'' In her remarks before sentencing, Handy spoke of the steroid scandal tearing through Major League Baseball. She noted that New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi, who has been linked to steroid abuse, was decimated by illness during the 2004 season. "Steroids are extraordinarily dangerous. You have no idea what the long-term effects are going to be of what you ingested for that period of time, in large quantities,'' Handy told Gottlieb. She predicted that as the medical evidence mounts and steroid abuse is thrust further into the public eye, prosecutions of users and distributors would increase in Connecticut. But she said, in this case, Gottlieb did not deserve to go to jail because he was not dealing the drug. She placed Gottlieb on probation for three years. His lawyers said he should consider himself lucky, and take the outcome as a wake-up call. "Forget whether it's unfair to use steroids as a competitive athlete, or whether it's unhealthy, or whether it may create negative behaviors. Just the fact that it's so easy to get caught and the penalty can be so high, that's reason enough not to do it. The risk of a substantial sentence is there," Kirschbaum said. Fading Warnings But in the place where steroid users increasingly converse, those warnings fade quickly The Internet steroid community is burgeoning and easily accessible to a generation that has grown up in cyberspace. Berlin gym owner Jack Banks, 47, didn't grow up on the Internet. For 25 years, he says, he has been a vocal opponent of anabolic steroids. On a vacation on Block Island in August, Banks got an unsolicited lesson about the modern-day steroid landscape. Before Banks and a friend placed their order at an ice-cream shop, a teenager behind the counter engaged them in conversation about fitness. Since Banks and his friend are in good shape, the ice-cream clerk asked if they lift weights. "The kid said to me, `You've got a good build ... but I'll be looking better than you in two months,'" Banks said. The teen told Banks he planned to start a cycle of Dianabol, an anabolic steroid used by bodybuilders. He said he was ordering the drug on the Internet and had done all of his research online. When Banks told the teen to steer clear of steroids, the kid chuckled. "What, are you kidding?" he said. "It's on the Web, it's got to be OK. I've done it before. I know what I'm doing." "So to hear this kid, it was just very discouraging," Banks said. "I couldn't believe it. ... It's almost like anything else with kids, almost like there's a desensitization. They go on the Internet and figure it can't be bad. I think that's the future, unfortunately." Those who educate teenagers and young adults about the risks of using steroids say the Internet has become a stronger adversary than any oversize gym peddler. If a kid was uncertain about steroids before, he would need to interact with a user or seller at a gym to gather information. The interaction would give a potential user reason to pause. But finding information - and even purchasing the drugs - is easy and seemingly anonymous on the Internet. "Kids are Internet-savvy," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, professor of the medicine division of health promotion and sports medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. "That's where they look and where they get information. Let's face it, you can't go to the local store [for steroids]. ... Kids, they go to the Internet for everything." The lead investigator in a steroids-possession case at Daniel Hand High School in Madison said one of six teenagers arrested in March had researched steroids on the Internet. "He looked up types of steroids, where to get them, and their effects,'' said Det. Sgt. Todd Curry of the Madison Police Department. The steroids - a particularly toxic variety called stenox - were purchased by three of the students while on a family vacation in Mexico, where steroids are legal. "The kids realized how easy it was to get, that you could walk into any pharmacy in Mexico and get it over the counter,'' Curry said. If a young person is receptive to using steroids, the Internet will only validate those instincts. "The marketing on the Internet is such that it's made very appealing in terms of either performance or appearance," said Gary Wadler, a New York doctor and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency. "These sites have a cachet of making it sound legitimate. They cite references to support their claims. They even cite references just to have it on the site, so it looks medical. It has a texture and feel of being legitimate. Now, if you're young and not wise to these matters, you can be easily seduced. And they are seduced." And while there is anti-steroid information on the Internet, it often doesn't resonate with young athletes who are tempted by the competitive shortcuts that steroids can offer. "The serious medical effects are long-term effects that build up over time," said Harvard psychologist and author Harrison Pope, who has studied the bodybuilding world and steroid abuse. "And if you're an 18-year-old who's contemplating taking steroids, you're not likely to be deterred by the fact that you might have a heart attack or a stroke or kidney failure or prostate cancer when you are 60 years old because that's too far away to be imaginable." Goldberg has helped create a drug-prevention program for high schools. He has heard a great deal of anecdotal evidence about a rise in steroids use and he attributes much of the increase to the ease of the Internet. "This is the method for buying the stuff," Goldberg said. "There are just so many sites and so many options, and there is so much misinformation on the Internet. It's out there so much, there's an appearance of it being more mainstream. Kids sort of get sucked into the [steroid] world." The cloak of legitimacy extends beyond the Internet steroids underworld, Goldberg said. Search the Internet for the word `steroid' and you also are inundated with advertising references. "It's `Your TV on steroids' or `Your website on steroids,'" Goldberg said. "The word is everywhere. It's absurd. People don't even think about it anymore and in a subconscious way, kids are desensitized because there's no shock value. Kids spend so much time on the Internet and they see the word everywhere. How can they not think steroids are OK?" A 2003 survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 6 percent of high school students had used steroids at least once, up from 2.7 percent in 1991. A 2004 poll for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that 2.5 percent of the country's 12th-graders had used the drug in the last year. That translates to about 80,000 high school seniors. The survey included boys and girls, athletes and non-athletes. And it is young people who have the most to lose from steroids abuse. Anabolic steroids, chemical reproductions of the male hormone testosterone, can wreak havoc on immature bodies by stunting growth and damaging muscles. No one knows this more than Hooton, who has immersed himself in the steroid culture since the death of his son. Taylor Hooton suffered from depression and his father believes steroid use led to a downward emotional spiral that resulted in his suicide. For two years now, Hooton has been a voice against steroids. He testified before Congress in March and frequently speaks to parents and high school students, stressing that the long-term effects of steroids are unknown, but potentially dangerous. He believes, though, that the Internet is the powerful counterpoint. "I can talk to a group of parents and kids and deliver a presentation in conjunction with a world-class doctor," Hooton said. "But the kids go home and get on the Internet and go to those chat rooms and they convince each other - sometimes in no more than five minutes - that [we're] idiots and we don't know what they're talking about." Hooton's son purchased his steroids from a dealer at the YMCA in his hometown of Plano, Texas. But as Donald Hooton began studying the steroid culture, he was drawn to the Internet and the pro-steroid voices in cyberspace. "When I talk to kids, I say let's understand that steroids work," Hooton said. "And second, understand the severe psychological problems that Taylor and some other kids experienced are extremely rare. So I'm not going to tell you the threat here is that you're going to walk out of here and die. ... We don't know what the risks really are. It's just a tough one to fight, man, especially with everything on the Internet." There are those who defend the use of steroids by adults for cosmetic purposes, yet even the most visible of these proponents say the drug should not be available to teenagers or even young adults. During interplay on steroid message boards, teenagers are told by seemingly experienced users to wait until their bodies are developed before using steroids. But it's hard for a kid to decipher that message. "They are going to believe what they want to believe," Hooton said. "Whether we're at a point where kids are buying them on the Internet or not, they're on there getting information. They know this stuff works and will make them stronger. For parents, it's scary." And no one knows how to stop it. Steroid use was a problem before the Internet and now this new twist just makes it worse. Brennan, the special prosecutor, says penalties aren't severe enough. Coleman, the DEA official, says every prosecution is breaking new ground. Reduce the demand. Toughen the laws. Make the penalties stick. That's what most people think will help. And yes, the police and lawyers and coaches can help, Hooton believes. He also advocates talking to your state representative and congressman. But in the end, says the father who lost a son to this, it's up to one group. "Parents need to wake up," Hooton said. "This is going on everywhere. Pay attention to what your child is doing." |
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