Anabolic Steroid Use Grows, Legal or Not (Published 1996) (2024)

Whenever the Olympic Games take the world stage, accusations about the use of performance-enhancing drugs are sure to follow. This time, pointed fingers and knowing nudges have been directed at various athletes, including Eastern European athletes, five of whom tested positive for a stimulant and were disqualified from competing in the Games.

Perhaps the accusations come so easily because the illegitimate use of such controlled substances, banned in competitions, has become so common. Although no one in the Summer Olympics has so far tested positive for anabolic steroids, which are used to enhance muscle-building, they have been the drugs of choice for athletes such as bodybuilders, runners and football players in the last two decades. Indeed, the drugs are big business.

In 1991, after mounting evidence of the drugs' ability to stunt adolescents' growth and perhaps touch off psychotic and violent behavior, anabolic steroids, which are synthetic derivatives of male sex hormones, were placed on the Federal list of controlled substances. Illicit sales of the drugs are punishable by as much as five years in prison.

Before 1991, about 50 percent of steroid users obtained the drugs through medical professionals, the Drug Enforcement Administration has said. The drugs are legally used to treat some diseases.

But virtually all current abusers obtain the substance from the black market. And the black market is huge: An estimated 500,000 Americans, mostly young, white and male, spend a total of $400 million a year on the synthetic steroid hormones. Far from seeking a chemical high, they ingest or inject the drug to build up their biceps and puff up their pectorals to improve their prowess in sports -- or just to show off their brawn.

At the same time, a quiet revolution is under way in the much smaller but booming legal market for the drug. IMS America, a company in Totowa, N.J., that compiles information on the health care industry, estimated that $36.7 million worth of anabolic steroids were sold through prescriptions or administered in hospitals last year. In just the first five months of this year, IMS America calculated, sales have swelled by 38.5 percent compared with the corresponding period last year.