The sums of money Arnold was making were “very low,” she said. “I think we should have charged more.”
Pat confirmed via email that he only made $15-20 thousand over the course of the THREE YEARS he provided tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) and norbolethone to elite athletes while working with Victor Conte. The government calls a $5,000 a year operation a major steroid bust?!
While the BALCO steroid bust involving undetectable performance enhancing drugs was a big deal to Pat Arnold et al and the athletes involved, the dismantling of BALCO had practically no direct impact on the commercial trade of anabolic steroids on the black market. However, the role of the BALCO scandal as the impetus for the current steroid hysteria can not be underestimated.
The government is purportedly going to prove that Barry Bonds and other athletes used steroids due, in part, to an increase in the size of the head and feet.
In Thursday’s court filings, prosecutors said they will rely in part on Thomas’ body features to prove she used steroids. Similarly, they are expected to show a jury significant growth to Bonds’ head, feet and other body changes during the time he was alleged to have used steroids.
Sports journalists and laypersons have so frequently asserted that increased head circumference and foot size is a side effect of anabolic steroids, that the government thinks it is a documented fact.
Certainly, anabolic steroids can affect the size of body parts other than muscle tissue. Steroid use can result in reduced testicular size in male steroid users and clitoral enlargement in female steroid users. Do you suppose that the government will subpoena measurements of Barry Bonds’ testicles or Tammy Thomas’ clitoris to prove steroid use?
Nothing would surprise me given the scope of the federal steroid witch hunt. The federal government is desperately seeking to use perjury as the tool to make examples of steroid-using athletes given the monumental failure of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act to reduce or eliminate steroid use in professional sports.
Congress should simply subpoena all professional athletes from every sport to answer questions about steroid use under oath. “Springing the perjury trap” on steroid using athletes would be considerably more effective strategy than the flawed Anabolic Steroids Control Act.
Recently, I discussed a potential strategy for the reformation of steroid laws that has been used by drug law reformers seeking to legalizing other scheduled drugs like marijuana. In sum, instead of arguing that steroids are relatively benign drugs whose side effects have been grossly exaggerated, efforts towards reform should focus on arguing that “legalization is safer than prohibition.”
I received an email from attorney Philip Sweitzer, Esq. who strongly disagreed with this approach:
The problem with this approach is that it fails to take into account the widely disparate constitutional differences between steroids and hallucinogens/opiates, making them all part of the same “legalization” regime. Steroids should be legalized, specifically because their profile for addictive abuse is ZERO. This argument plays right into the hands of the prohibitionists, by making one issue (steroids) the same as the other (addictive opiates and non-addictive hallucinogens.) We have to get out of the “one drug is the same as any other drug” mindset, in developing public policy on drugs.
He agrees that prohibition isn’t effective, but we should never forget that anabolic steroids do not meet the traditional Control Substances Act criteria for scheduling and should never be lumped together with other Schedule III substances.
I agree with the “prohibition just doesn’t work anyway,” idea and the concept that incarceration as a tool of prohibition is a waste of tax payer money. But framing the argument around other Schedule III drugs I think buys into the notion that AAS belong there - AAS need to be OFF Schedule III.
I think he is right. While prohibition may represent bad public policy and legalization/regulation would be a better alternative, the circumstances surrounding the scheduling of anabolic-androgenic steroids are unique and deserve to be evaluated independently.
Steroid law reformers should primarily focus on repealing the Anabolic Steroid Control Act and removing them from the list of controlled substances. Regardless of feelings regarding the Controlled Substances Act and prohibition, anabolic steroids do not belong there. We should not cede this point.
