The United Kingdom intends to expand its anabolic steroid laws in preparation for the 2012 London Olympics in response to pressure from the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The steroid law revision is largely a symbolic move by the United Kingdom. It is an attempt to appease WADA by showing their commitment anti-doping in sports; however, the personal use of anabolic steroids and the importation of anabolic steroids for personal use will continue to be permitted under UK steroid law. The proposed legislation is unlikely to have any effect on steroid use in the United Kingdom.
The new proposal seeks to make British steroid law consistent with the WADA prohibited substance list. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommended adding an additional 24 anabolic steroids (mostly marginally effective prohormones) and 2 non-steroidal agents to the existing list of 54 anabolic steroid and 5 growth hormones currently classified as Schedule 4 (IV) controlled substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Suggestions by the media that the proposed changes to UK steroid law are intended to protect the children are disingenuous. The driving forces behind the new steroid laws are IOC/WADA and the 2012 London Olympics (”Proposed control of 1-benzylpiperazine (BZP) and a group of substituted piperazines, as well as an additional 24 anabolic steroids and 2 non-steroidal agents,” May 21).
The original group of steroids were identified by reference to the International Olympic Commission Prohibited List. It is therefore appropriate for us to update our controls by reference to its successor, the World Anti-Doping Agency Prohibited List. It will provide consistency in our approach and is fully in line with the Government’s commitment to prevent the misuse of these substances both by the general public but also by elite athletes, particularly in the lead up to the London Olympics in 2012. [...]
The measure to control 24 additional anabolic steroid substances and 2 non-steroidal products under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 will support the Government’s commitment to strengthening the mechanisms to tackle doping in sport, targeting those facilitating doping and tackle trafficking, supply and manufacture of doping substances and those involved in such activities.
The IOC has long pressured the United Kingdom to criminalize personal use of steroids. Without changes to steroid possession laws, the IOC and WADA are unlikely to be satisfied by the Home Office’s latest recommendations. The United Kingdom’s permissive steroid possession laws will likely become increasingly problematic as the 2012 London Olympics approach. We expect the IOC to continue to lobby the U.K. government to adopt legislation that criminalizes mere use and possession of anabolic steroids.
The personal use of anabolic steroids and the importation of anabolic steroids for personal use remains explicitly permitted in the United Kingdom when in the form of a medicinal product under the new proposals. Read more
IFBB professional bodybuilders Martin Kjellström and Irene Andersen were interrogated by police in Sweden during a recent series of steroid raids in Göteborg, Stockholm and Malmö during the week of April 20th, 2009. Police apparently rounded up twelve of the top Swedish bodybuilders, including at least two IFBB pro bodybuilders, during an exploratory investigation into steroid distribution in the region. But no charges have been filed in the case (”Kroppsbyggare fast i drograzzia,” May 6).
Swedish police have been known to arrest bodybuilders for suspicion of steroid use based on appearance alone. Police questioned the bodybuilders about their use of anabolic steroids. Most of the bodybuilders interrogated were found in possession of steroids in personal quantities for bodybuilding purposes. All indications suggest that Swedish police are primarily interested in busting major drug dealers of steroids and narcotics and not bodybuilders who use personal quantities of steroids and related performance enhancing drugs.
IFBB pro Martin Kjellström cooperated with police and permitted them to search his home where they discovered only small quantities of anabolic steroids. The steroids purportedly amounted to a 1-2 week personal supply; Kjellström’s physician in Norway corrobated the pharmaceutical regimen with Swedish police. Kjellström explained to police that most bodybuilders are hard-working professional athletes and NOT drug dealers. There was NOT a steroid bust but only involved questioning by the Swedish doping police. It is not expect to effect his contest preparations for the 2009 Mr. Olympia. Read more
Kenneth Hebert and his common-law wife Leticia Zamora, owners of TexStar Labs and Phalco Labs, faced United States District Judge David Hittner for sentencing on January 28, 2009. Hebert was senteced to four years imprisonment (or double the term of imprisonment advocated by prosecutors) whereas Zamora withdrew her guilty plea after Judge Hittner denied her probation deal with the government (”Pearland man gets prison for at-home steroid factory,” January 28).
A Pearland man who ran a major anabolic steroid factory in his house was sentenced to four years in federal prison on Wednesday, but his wife withdrew her guilty plea and opted to go to trial.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner sentenced Kenneth Hebert to about twice what prosecutor Peter Mason had suggested for distributing the performance-enhancing drug, made of ingredients from China.
Hebert and Zamora both pleaded guilty to their respective roles in the illegal operation of a large-scale underground anabolic steroid laboratory out of their Houston-area home. The couple manufactured raw steroid powder into oral and injectable steroid products that were distributed under the TexStar Labs and Phalco Labs label. The steroid case represented one of the largest UGL steroid busts resulting from Operation Raw Deal.
The couple decided to spend their available funds to hire an attorney from the Montalvo Law Firm to represent Leticia Zamora and provide her with the best opportunity to avoid prison time so that she could raise the couple’s two young children, ages five and seven; Kenneth Hebert was represented by a federal public defender.
Ashley Vincent Livingston, better known as Redicat in the world of black market androgens, was extradited to the United States for prosecution last Tuesday after spending eight months in a Thailand jail. Redicat was taken into custody by Thai police last March 2008, along with British Dragon co-founder Edwin Richard Crawley, in Pattaya (Thailand) as part of an international sting operation involving the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). During his detention in Thai jail, he allegedly cooperated fully with Thai police in response to torture providing law enforcement with extensive information about his customers and business associates (”Spilling the beans on the Big Thai Bust,” December 14).
- Access to 10 years of complete order records.
- A list of bribes and gifts given to various board moderators [which included free product, Rolex watches and cash].
- Details of payments to various bodybuilding forums for banner ads and other forms of online advertising.
- Statements detailing purchases of stock made from well known suppliers and manufacturers.
Redicat was officially arrested on December 9, 2008 by U.S. Marshall Special Agent Jason Sherrell upon arriving at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on a flight from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. His extradition was delayed by the Thailand airport closures at the end of November.
Ashley Livingston was transferred to a facility in Seattle, Washington where awaits trial facing multiple steroid distribution, steroid conspiracy and money laundering charges along with his co-conspirator Edwin Crawley in the United States District Court in the Western District of Washington as part of massive Operation Raw Deal investigation. Read more
Academic researchers and policy experts advocated the acceptance of pharmacological performance-enhancement by mentally-competent, healthy individuals in a thought-provoking commentary in the journal Nature. The authors of the commentary restricted their argument to cognitive-enhancing drugs such as Adderall, Ritalin and Provigil, but every facet of their argument, point by point, holds relevance for a “presumption” that healthy individuals, not competing in drug-tested sports, should be able to engage in physical enhancement using anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. They call for policy on performance-enhancing drugs to be based on a rational, evidence-based approach.
The authors, which include Nature editor-in-chief Philip Campbell, point out that the acceptance of elective, enhancements for healthy individuals has been widely accepted in certain medical specialties (”Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy,” December 7).
Physicians who view medicine as devoted to healing will view such prescribing as inappropriate, whereas those who view medicine more broadly as helping patients live better or achieve their goals would be open to considering such a request. There is certainly a precedent for this broader view in certain branches of medicine, including plastic surgery, dermatology, sports medicine and fertility medicine.
The authors do attempt to distinguish pharmacological physical enhancement as a form of cheating, as contrasted with cognitive enhancement, but ONLY in the context of sport. Read more
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) reached an agreement with INTERPOL to faciliate international police cooperation in its politicized and moralistic campaign against the use of anabolic steroids for non-medical purposes (e.g. motivated by increased muscle size, improved strength, enhanced athletic performance and greater physical attractiveness). WADA has spearheaded the internationalization of steroid law with UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport with a stated objective of criminalizing personal non-medical steroid use by apply the force of international law behind the anti-doping WADA code.
Now, WADA has garnered the support of INTERPOL, the world’s largest police force, to act as a sort of international moral police upholding the steroids-are-evil morality, stamping out cheaters and protecting the children (”WADA strengthens ties with law enforcement agencies,” November 24).
“We’ve got to the point of the implementations of the arrangements with Interpol to help in the international fight we are endeavouring to undertake,” WADA president John Fahey told reporters. “This is a significant step forward.
“As demonstrated by the recent high profile doping cases and investigations, government action and the sharing of information between law enforcement agencies and anti-doping organisations can be crucial in exposing anti-doping rule violations that would not have been detected through testing.
“Law enforcement and government agencies possess investigative powers to attack the source and supply of illegal substances which sport does not have.”
One of the biggest problems caused by using the WADA code as the basis for international law is the fact that the overwhelming majority of non-medical steroid users are NOT athletes. So, instead of addressing the problem of doping in sports, it targets consenting adult non-athletes who have no relation to competitive sports.
President-elect Barack Obama has selected Phil Schiliro as the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. Schiliro will play an important role in the Obama-Biden administration as Obama’s top White House Congressional liason. Phil Schiliro was Chief of Staff to Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman for the House Oversight Committee (”Philip Schiliro, Veteran Congressional Aide, Named To Obama’s Staff,” November ).
Phil Schiliro, as Waxman’s Chief of Staff, is given most of the credit for initiating the Congressional hearings on anabolic steroid use in baseball after reading Jose Canseco’s book Juiced. The Congressional grandstanding at the steroid witch-hunt was also known as “Restoring Faith in America’s Pastime: Evaluating Major League Baseball’s Efforts to Eradicate Steroid Use” Read more
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) thanked governments around the world for joining them in their efforts to internationalize steroid law around the world during a ceremony to celebrate the ratification of the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport 2005 by over 100 countries.
WADA has explicitly stated their desire for all national governments to criminalize the use of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs as defined in the WADA code. WADA’s politically-correct and moralistic agenda, like U.S. steroid law enforcement policy, seeks to pressure and coerce other governments to think alike and conform to accept its policy as the defacto international anti-steroid policy (”WADA praises governments for anti-doping stance,” November 12).
WADA’s David Howman said Wednesday that 102 countries have ratified the UNESCO Convention on Doping in Sport since it came into force nearly two years ago. It means anti-doping measures become part of national law in the countries that have ratified the agreement.
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“We’re not there yet, we still have a long way to go. (Doping) is too easy in many countries because there are not strong enough laws,” Howman said. “Let’s enhance the fight through legislation.”
Steroid policy experts have been critical of the internationalization of steroid law for its highly politicized and moralistic agenda. Philip Sweitzer analyzes the trend of political correctness in the current debate on steroid law policy that has troubling consequences for countries around the world Read more
The International Olympic Committe (IOC) is pressuring the United Kingdom (UK) to criminalize the personal use of anabolic steroids prior to the 2012 London Olympics. The mere possession of anabolic steroids and/or the importation of steroids for personal use is not an offense under UK law. Consequently, athletes (and bodybuilders) in the United Kingdom can technically use anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) without violating UK law. But this may soon change in the next few years if the IOC has their way (”IOC pressure Great Britain to change doping laws ahead of London Olympics 2012,” November 8).
The IOC are growing increasingly frustrated at Britain’s refusal to introduce legislation to outlaw the possession, supply and distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.
Their stance leaves them out of step with other European countries such as Sweden, France, Italy, Greece and Germany where anti-doping laws mean athletes and their suppliers can go to jail.
Great Britain’s refusal to blindly follow the trend towards the internationalization of steroid law taking hold in the rest of the European Union presents a significant threat to the moral authority of the IOC. The IOC has promoted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code as the guide for certain moral offenses that should be criminalized. Read more
The passage of a new anti-doping law will criminalize the manufacture, importation, exportation, storage and distribution of anabolic steroids in the Czech Republic. Offenders who violate the anti-doping laws face one to three years imprisonment. The actual consumption of anabolic steroids will not become illegal, but the possession of steroids for non-medical use could lead to criminal investigation.
The purchase of anabolic steroids have long required a medical prescription within the Czech Republic. However, prior to the current steroid legislation, Czech drug laws did not regulate the import, export or distribution in the Czech Republic. These loopholes permitted an underground steroid marketplace worth hundreds of millions of Czech crowns to thrive virtually unimpeded. Czech Customs could only intervene and seize anabolic steroids imported from other countries if the sender failed to declare the merchandise as “anabolic steroids.” As a result Czech bodybuilders and athletes could previously import and use steroids without any legal consequences.
Czech Police are preparing to crack down hard on steroid use as soon as the legislation criminalizing the non-medical use of steroids takes effect Read more
Rick Collins, leading steroid legal expert from Collins, McDonald & Gann, has released an analysis of the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008 that doubles maximum steroid trafficking sentences. President Bush signed the legislation on October 15, 2008 to “put an end to the illegal sale of highly addictive prescription drugs on the Internet” to “ensure a safer future for our children.”
The legislation amends the Controlled Substances Act to address issues related to internet pharmacies, internet pharmacy prescriptions and the dispensing of controlled substances via the Internet. Even though, the legislation’s namesake was a teenager who overdosed on Vicodin (and not anabolic steroids), the Act represents a continuation in the “war on steroid trafficking.”
Rick Collins specifically looks at the far-reaching consequences for anabolic steroid trafficking cases (”Maximum Steroid Trafficking Sentences to Double,” October 28). Read more
Barack Obama made an unintentional attack on Joe Biden, his running mate on the Democratic Presidential ticket, for his long legislative record on anabolic steroids. Joseph Biden has been on an anti-steroid crusade for almost two decades; Biden is responsible for key legislation criminalizing anabolic steroids and diverting significant government resources in a misguided attempt at fighting steroids in sports.
Obama attacked Joseph Biden’s position on anabolic steroids (without specificially attributing it to his vice presidential candidate by name) on ESPN Radio’s “Mike & Mike in the Morning“. Obama suggested that congressional obsession with anabolic steroids was largely a waste of time and that the federal government had far more important things to worry about (”Obama Differs from McCain on Steroids,” October 2).
“I gotta admit that seeing a lot of congressional hearings around steroid use is not probably the best use of congressional time,” Obama said.
[...]
But Obama suggested this morning there were more important things on which the government should focus.
“Kids are watching sports. They’re modeling themselves on athletes,” Obama said. “It’s a serious problem, but it’s one that you want to see the leagues themselves handle in a more appropriate way. We’ve got nuclear weapons and a financial meltdown to worry about. We shouldn’t be worrying about steroids as much as I think sometimes we do.”
Some people think that Barack Obama was criticizing the Republican presidential nominee John McCain which he was most likely attempted to do. But Obama’s campaign disagrees with this interpretation of his comments.
Read more
Advocates of steroid law reform are very disappointed that Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama selected Senator Joseph Biden as his vice presidential nominee. Senator Biden was the chief architect of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 that criminalized the possession of anabolic steroids for non-medical purposes. Biden also wrote the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 which opened the door for significantly harsher penalties for steroid possession and steroid distribution; this has resulted in the increased prosecution of steroid users over the past few years who are treated as dangerous criminals with the worst penalties for the non-medical use of steroids in history. Senator Biden has been on his anti-steroid crusade for almost two decades.
Steroid law expert Rick Collins revealed in testimony to the United States Sentencing Commission that the typical non-medical steroid users has been misrepresented to the public and to legislators.
Following the revelation of an international doping scandal centered in Austria, the Austrian government has announced legislation that will criminalize mere possession of anabolic steroid and/or other performance enhancing drugs. Previously, there was no punishment for possession of steroids (”Austria to tighten anti-doping law,” April 18).
Legislation to tighten Austria’s anti-doping laws by criminalising possession of performance-enhancing substances are to be unveiled this summer, the government announced on Friday.
According to proposals to be unveiled in early July, it will be a criminal offence to be found in possession of doping substances above a certain quantity, said Roland Achatz, spokesperson for sports secretary Reinhold Lopatka.
It also appears that Greece is prepared to criminalize steroid possession as well as a major steroid scandal involving the Greek Weightlifting Team unfolds (”Greece to target doping cheats,” April 19).
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis pledged yesterday to tighten the country’s anti-doping laws in a bid to stamp out illegal substance abuse among athletes.
”A special committee was formed… to consider more stringent administrative and criminal sanctions against those who use, provide and market banned substances,” Karamanlis told Parliament.
The “internationalization of steroid law” predicted by Philip Sweitzer is becoming a reality.
The internationalized, fascistic nature of current steroid law enforcement policy thus emerges. Hegemony is its stated goal, that U.S. policy must be tantamount to international policy: all nations must conform to the legal standard of the United States. We must all think alike… The “internationalization” of steroid law, however, is also troubling for its politicization and heavy-handed reliance on dishonest notions of morality, cheating, and “protecting our children,” rather than science…
A full analysis of the internationalization of steroid law by Sweitzer can be found in “AAS Across the Atlantic: The “Americanization” and Politicization of International Steroid Law“.
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.
