Most people at every point on the steroid regulatory spectrum, from the advocates of steroid legalization to anti-steroid zealots, agree that anabolic steroid use by teenagers is bad. There are a few people who believe steroids are good for children, pre-teens and teenagers. But in general, most people agree with government efforts to reduce steroid use in teenage athletes. Unfortunately, they seem to accept all anti-steroid efforts without question regardless of their efficacy or lack thereof. People seem to be content with “feel good” endeavors that accomplish little. Read the rest of this entry »
I interviewed the Chris Bell, the director of “Bigger Stronger Faster” on the eve of the world premiere of his acclaimed steroid documentary last night at the Sundance Film Festival. There are a lot of interesting comments about anabolic steroids. But I thought readers of the Steroid Report would be particularly interested in Chris’ observations on Rep. Henry Waxman, the Congressman behind most of the steroids in baseball hearings:
So I go into someone’s office who is a congressman and I’m a 33-year old kid at the time and I’m walking into his office… I’m really nervous. This guy is going to know it all – he’s going to have all the facts down, he’s going to be a politician, boom, boom, boom!”
I’ve written a lot about the loophole of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) that allows athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids, growth hormone, amphetamines, etc. for a competitive advantage. I used the 2006 Tour de France as a prime example, where 60% of drug-tested riders had a TUE for some banned substance. The congressional hearings on the Mitchell Report included testimony that over 8% of Major League Baseball players had TUEs for ADD/ADHD drugs such as Adderall or Ritalin.
Gary Gaffney, M.D., from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, offers a defense of TUEs in his blog: Read the rest of this entry »
According to the Mitchell Report, the use of anabolic steroids by athletes is not simply an ethical problem or a health problem. Cheating with the use of performance enhancing drugs is a “broader and more nuanced activity” that can seriously threaten the integrity of baseball.
Baseball players who use anabolic steroids are vulnerable to being victimized by gamblers:
[D]rug dealers could blackmail a player to alter the outcome of a game in exchange for maintaining the secrecy of the player’s substance use. Such threats to the integrity of the game are as serious as gambling.
