Juiced: Congress, Steroids, and the Law
By Sarah Kellogg

In a society that thrives on competition and handsomely rewards victory, the end often can justify the means. That can be especially true in sports, where an athlete’s earning capacity is measured by home runs, touchdowns, and goals. It is no wonder they look for a competitive edge, whether it is the latest high-tech gear or a performance-enhancing pill. Even the smallest advantage—an inch, a second, or an ounce—can mean the difference between victory and defeat, between a $1 million payday and a demotion to the minor leagues.

Not surprisingly then, steroids, human growth hormone (HGH), and other performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) have been—and remain, some would argue—as ubiquitous in today’s locker rooms as dirty towels. Their near-mythic reputation for delivering superhuman stamina, muscle, and power is too beguiling to ignore, and the dangers that come with using some of these drugs is too arbitrary to be taken seriously.

Sports magazines have been riddled with stories of steroid abuses for two decades as hundreds of professional athletes and Olympic champions have faced the walk of shame after testing positive for PEDs. Guilty athletes are stripped of medals or suspended from games, accompanied by the appropriate mea culpa, yet the punishments and shame have done little to stop the juicing. Recent news has focused on abuses in Major League Baseball, but the rumors about pumped-up stars in every sport still circulate quietly behind the scenes.

PEDs are no longer just de rigueur in sports or bodybuilding. The entertainment industry has embraced them as well, especially HGH, in its efforts to stave off aging and secure a youthful future. The iconic Sylvester Stallone, star of the action film series Rambo and Rocky, caused a stir in January when he defended his use of testosterone and HGH in Time magazine. He did it without a hint of embarrassment and with a huckster’s knack for hyperbole. “HGH is nothing. Anyone who calls it a steroid is grossly misinformed,” he told Time. “Testosterone to me is so important for a sense of well-being when you get older. Everyone over 40 years old would be wise to investigate it because it increases the quality of your life. Mark my words. In 10 years it will be over the counter.”

Stallone’s prediction is ominous for some, mostly because they view it as ill-informed, sending a dangerous message to impressionable teenagers and weekend athletes looking for a cheap and easy way to beef up. For the antisteroid crowd, PEDs are as dangerous, if not more so, than illegal drugs, such as cocaine and marijuana, because there is no taboo tied to using them. They complain that Stallone’s comments are little more than the ranting of a man who hasn’t borne the cost of a lifetime of juicing, at least not yet.

“Everybody has been beyond complacent about performance-enhancing drugs,” says Rob Housman, a Washington lawyer and former staffer at the White House Drug Czar’s Office who now sits as a member of the board of the Taylor Hooton Foundation. The Texas-based nonprofit, named in honor of a 17-year-old student who committed suicide in 2003 after taking steroids, has pressed for bans on steroids, HGH, and other PEDs. “The celebrities have been part of it. The sports leagues have been part of it. The fans have been part of it. There hasn’t been a rush anywhere to stop this from continuing and to protect our children from what can be dangerous drugs.”

Still, there have been substantive efforts in state capitals and on Capitol Hill to curb the use of PEDs by individual athletes while looking for ways to restrict their distribution and shrink the market, which is estimated to be at least $2 billion annually. The focus has been on making it more difficult to purchase PEDs, although a more controversial proposal would force professional sports leagues to comply with a national mandated testing regimen instead of their current voluntary one. Similarly, states have taken a route that holds athletes accountable through testing. Four states randomly test high school athletes for PEDs.

Despite all the testing, anecdotal evidence suggests PED use is widespread and may be growing, and that’s the rub, observers say. There is a terrific disconnect between what is known about PEDs, what is imagined about them, and what can be done about them. They are legal. They are regulated. There are disputes about their efficacy. There are even disagreements about their dangers. And, there is no cost-effective way to broadly measure use—or abuse.

Like many of today’s designer and lifestyle drugs, PEDs may be “better living through chemistry,” or at least perceived as such. The question facing lawmakers and public health officials from Washington to Main Street is, What can and should be done about them?

A Culture of Use
Look around, most likely there is somebody in your office, at your gym, or in your book club who is taking a performance-enhancing substance. If you think only bodybuilders and professional athletes are injecting steroids or HGH, think again. These days, PED users are as diverse as their reasons for taking them—losing weight, building muscle, and developing great six-pack abs. Except for a few daydreamers, many of today’s users are not looking to hit home runs; they are using PEDs with the hope they will stay fit and healthy into their dotage.

Anthony Roberts, senior editor at Steroids.com, a Web-based information clearinghouse for steroids and HGH users, confirms that the average steroid user isn’t taking PEDs to enter the Mr. Olympia contest.

“They aren’t looking to be 300 pounds and 2 percent body fat,” Roberts says of his Web site’s readers. “We typically find that they’re looking to feel better about themselves. Most people using steroids are eating right and training all the time. They want to be healthy, and they’re using them to take that extra step.”

It hasn’t always been this way. In the past, steroids were found mostly in the gym, the drug of choice among pro wrestlers and bodybuilders, or they were a carefully hidden secret in the locker rooms in college and pro sports. Yet as most major professional and amateur athletic organizations—including the International Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and all of the nation’s pro sports leagues—have banned steroids and other PEDs, they have infiltrated the drug cabinets of the average citizen.

Weekend sports warriors can buy them at the gym or over the Internet. Type the word “steroids” into Google, and the search engine comes back with more than 17 million hits. Type in “buying steroids,” and it returns more than 155,000 hits. Search results for HGH and other PEDs are just as plentiful. The Web turns out to be the amateur athlete’s pharmacy of choice for steroid or PED purchases—no prescription necessary, of course.

These days, entertainment magazines speculate about PED use whenever they see significant weight loss and muscle growth in hip hop music stars or actors preparing for their next movie roles. This past January rumors turned to real news when The Times Union of Albany, New York, reported rappers 50 Cent, Wyclef Jean, and Timbaland as well as R&B star Mary J. Blige were implicated in a steroids investigation by the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, which was scrutinizing doctors who illegally prescribed drugs for nonmedical purposes.

Long felt to be a problem among men and young male athletes, steroids and HGH are finding some converts in the ranks of women and teenage girls, especially female athletes, middle-age women on antiaging kicks, and cheerleaders. For every Marion Jones, the Olympic sprinter who was stripped of her medals and sentenced to jail for lying to federal investigators about PED use, there are likely thousands of women who are pumping HGH to trim waistlines as well as tone and sculpt muscles.

Antidrug activists worry that the message to teenagers is that the payoff on steroids is more than a muscled torso—it is cold hard cash, or at least a shot at fame. Ironically, the teens may be taking the threat a bit more seriously than their parents. A February poll commissioned by Sports Illustrated showed 97 percent of teen athletes surveyed would not try steroids or HGH if they knew these substances would make them better athletes. Of the 3 percent remaining, one-third said they would try them and two-thirds said they might. Meanwhile, some upper-income, middle-aged adults are getting prescriptions of HGH from their doctors or antiaging clinics to fight the effects of growing older. While they claim it helps, there are no reliable studies to back up their newfound vitality or to determine the long-term effects of HGH on a healthy body, or an aging one.

The Medicine Cabinet
What’s the fuss all about? Most of these hormones are just synthetic versions of chemicals that are found naturally in the human body. Maybe, but scientists say too much of a good thing is still too much of a good thing.

The popularity of HGH has sparked a debate inside and outside the medical community about the efficacy and effects of taking growth hormones. While HGH has its legitimate uses—to treat adult growth hormone deficiency in adults and chronic kidney disease in children, for example—federal studies have shown it is no miracle cure. It is not an elixir that will reverse the aging process as some have suggested. HGH is produced by the pea-sized pituitary gland near the base of the brain, which diminishes as people age.

“In this modern day and age, we have witnessed the reemergence of the health and longevity salesman,” Dr. Alan D. Rogol, professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Virginia, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during two days of PEDs hearings in February. “Many members of the public have been misled to believe in the magical powers of growth hormones.”

A 2002 study by the National Institute on Aging found there were few benefits and serious side effects from HGH usage. A 2007 study by researchers at Stanford University confirmed those findings, noting HGH cannot be recommended as an antiaging formula. Still, many individuals and athletes believe it makes them feel revitalized and allows them to heal more quickly from serious injuries or strenuous workouts. The jury is still out on its speed-healing ability, though.

What doctors cite as proof HGH is no miracle cure is the fact that excessive production of HGH is a recognized disease known as acromegaly. High HGH levels can elevate blood sugar levels and cause diabetes. Improper use of HGH can increase triglyceride levels, which may contribute to heart disease, and boost fluid retention that could cause swelling, joint and muscle pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome.

While there may be some disagreement over the value of HGH, there is no debate about steroids: They are serious medicine. Anabolic steroids, more precisely anabolic-androgenic steroids, are synthetic derivatives of testosterone. While the anabolic properties help build muscle mass, the androgenic properties trigger male maturation, which can prove especially troublesome for women who take steroids.

While steroids can be taken orally, most users prefer injections because they are less toxic. Athletes can take higher or “mega doses” to produce faster results, or they can gradually increase their dosages over time in a process known as “pyramiding.” The more hazardous practice of “stacking” occurs when individuals mix any of the more than 100 steroid versions currently available. Most men produce fewer than 10 milligrams of testosterone a day, while women produce far more minute amounts. Steroid users, however, may use up to hundreds of milligrams a day of a testosterone-based drug.

“This is a bunch of nonscientists, nonclinicians, just trying to feel their way through this and say, ‘Oh, this worked for me and this worked,’ without really any monitoring for any long-term side effects,” said Dr. Thomas T. Perls, associate professor of medicine and geriatrics and director of the New England Centenarian Study at the Boston University School of Medicine, when he appeared before the committee.

Side effects from high doses, especially if use is unsupervised, can be significant, and often are irreversible. Most likely, the life-threatening effects go undetected until it is too late. For men, the effects run from impotence to the development of breasts and the shrinking of testicles. For women, the effects can be even more striking with the growth of facial hair, the deepening of the voice, and the reduction in breast size.

Aside from physical changes, long-term use of steroids, according to physicians, can result in life-endangering effects such as liver damage, elevated cholesterol levels, and premature heart attacks and strokes. The dangers for teens are even more lasting because steroids can prematurely stunt growth, ironically.

Equally devastating are the behavioral side effects that are commonly known as “roid rage.” Scientists say many individuals taking steroids exhibit extreme depression, irritability, and outright aggression. While stories of melancholy and aggressive behavior associated with steroids are legion, the occasional tragedy does come to light as well. Many believe professional wrestler Chris Benoit was experiencing roid rage when he killed his wife and seven-year-old son, and then killed himself in 2007. While cases of roid rage are real, steroid and HGH users point out the vast majority of individuals using PEDs don’t end up killing themselves or murdering their families.

Dragged Kicking and Screaming
PEDs may be the superstitious athlete’s replacement for other lucky charms, say a rabbit’s foot or a four-leaf clover. It seems especially true in professional baseball, and that may be why this team sport has been particularly resistant to PED bans and testing.

Tell it to Congress. Since 2000 members of Congress have been pressuring Major League
Baseball to use tough love on PED users in the league. Lawmakers were concerned baseball was dragging its feet on testing after the other pro team sports—basketball, football, and hockey, especially—had instituted voluntary and random drug testing of their athletes.

Baseball had other things on its mind. It was still recovering from the 1994–95 strike that swamped attendance and was still flying high after the home run derby of the 1990s between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. The fear was mandatory testing would make PEDs and hitting streaks a thing of the past if steroids were drummed out of baseball, depressing attendance and revenues. That may be right if Sosa and McGwire are the standard. Sosa claims he never took PEDs, although some suspected he did, and McGwire acknowledged he had been using the testosterone-producing drug androstenedione that was later banned by Congress. (McGwire bested Sosa in 1998 with a record-breaking 70 home runs in a single season.)

A miffed Congress wouldn’t give up on the doping, though, holding hearings in 2002 and 2004. Lawmakers made anabolic steroids a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 2004, stopping over-the-counter sales and requiring the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to track sales of steroids. (Listed under Schedule III are drugs or substances that have potential for abuse, and while they may have accepted medical use in the United States, abuse of such drugs may lead to moderate or low physical dependence, or high psychological dependence.) Meanwhile, Major League Baseball instituted a half-hearted attempt at testing midyear. The tests were sporadic, and the names of those who tested positive weren’t released.

Finally, in 2005, Congress got serious. The House Government Reform Committee held its infamous marathon, 11-hour meeting in March when Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, players union chief Donald Fehr, and McGwire and other players were forced to come to Capitol Hill. At times the hearing was testy, shocking, and sad, ripping apart the image of the players and the sport itself.

Two months later, the House Energy and Commerce Committee followed up with a dramatic two-day hearing, dragging in the commissioners from the top pro sports leagues to talk steroids and drug use and, more importantly, threatening the leagues that without a strong voluntary program, the federal government was likely to intervene. That November, baseball and its players finally reached agreement and implemented a tougher testing program.

The testing program might have taken hold, but it didn’t silence the rumors, especially in light of a federal investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), which was allegedly providing steroids to players. Selig asked former Senator George Mitchell, a Democrat who had served as Senate majority leader, to lead an independent investigation into baseball and steroid abuses.

Mitchell, a partner at DLA Piper and Washington’s diplomat-of-choice for thorny political situations, took 20 months to dig into baseball’s steroids scandal, widening his investigation at different points and eventually releasing a 409-page report in December 2007. It implicated seven MVPs and 31 All-Stars. In all, more than 80 players were alleged to have used PEDs.

Known officially as the Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball, the Mitchell report is the history of baseball’s steroid woes and its more recent obsession with HGH. As if to send a message about the report’s backward-looking approach, all the allegations documented in the report traced back to older incidents of steroid abuse, occurring between two and nine years prior.

“There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on,” Mitchell said at the December 13 news conference releasing the report. He recommended that players on the list not be disciplined, encouraging Selig, the owners, and the union to move forward with stronger testing policies.

The report became a hot commodity on the Web, downloaded by sports fans, government officials, and athletes and their agents. Congress kept a close eye on the report as well, saying it justified members’ calls for baseball to clean up its act.

“The committee’s three-year bipartisan investigation of performance-enhancing substance abuse in professional sports uncovered an industry dangerous and tolerant of pseudo-science and medical mysteries in its locker rooms,” said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) during the February hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Still, it didn’t take long for controversy to erupt as players challenged the report, charging its top tattlers—former New York Yankees trainer Brian McNamee and former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski—with misleading Mitchell and federal investigators. It was a challenge lawmakers felt compelled to respond to, and they jumped into the skirmish to defend the report’s honor and their own.

“Given the committee’s past work and our interest in an accurate record of baseball’s steroid era, we have investigated the evidence in Senator Mitchell’s report that relates to Mister McNamee and the players he identified,” said committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) in February. “Tom Davis and I made this decision reluctantly; we have no interest in making baseball a central part of our committee’s agenda. But if the Mitchell Report is to be the last word on baseball’s past, we believe we have a responsibility to investigate a serious claim of inaccuracy.”

And so they did, with a series of hearings including a brutal personal battle between friends.

David v. Goliath
Congress may have captured the public’s attention by dragging out the czars of American sports to swear their fealty to a no-steroids, no-HGH policy, but the ultimate congressional cage fight was the one that pitted ace pitcher Roger Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, against McNamee, his personal trainer.

Scheduled for February 14, a day after the committee hearing on the safety of PEDs, the Clemens-McNamee battle promised a lot more fireworks and even a hint of danger. After all, these two men had been friends at one point. McNamee had been a guest in Clemens’s home, and now he was Clemens’s chief accuser. Clemens sat to the committee’s right and McNamee to its left at the same table, mere feet away and barely acknowledging each other. The only thing missing from this tale of played-out friendship and betrayal was the vial of poison.

Clemens spoke first, defending his honor with a tight-lipped statement that barely contained his anger and frustration. Respectful but defiant, Clemens refused to change his story or admit to steroid or HGH use. “No matter what we discuss here today, I am never going to have my name restored, but I have got to try and set the record straight. However, by doing so, I am putting myself out there to all of you, knowing that because I said that I didn’t take steroids that this is looked as an attack on Senator Mitchell’s report,” Clemens told the committee.

“Where am I to go with that? I am not saying Senator Mitchell’s report is entirely wrong. I am saying Brian McNamee’s statements about me are wrong. Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH.”

Clemens denied he used PEDs, but he outed his wife, Debbie Clemens, as an HGH user. Debbie Clemens, according to her husband, received a shot of HGH from McNamee while he was staying in their home. She was intrigued, he said, by HGH’s reputed antiaging effects. Clemens claimed he did not know of his wife’s use of the hormone until after the fact, an explanation some critics viewed as a convenient shield to explain why he (Clemens) and McNamee may have discussed HGH together in the past.

When it came McNamee’s turn to testify, there seemed reluctance in the hearing room to embrace this David who was attempting to bring down Clemens. It was understandable—the pitching legend Clemens seemed larger than life at the table, while McNamee seemed to shrink.

McNamee recounted his story of protecting his team and his friends and colleagues in the early rounds of federal questioning, keeping the secret of steroid use and not wanting to betray their trust. But, the turning point, McNamee said, was in January when Clemens’s attorney revealed information on his son’s medical condition. Angered by the violation of privacy, McNamee finally revealed that he not only had injected Clemens with steroids, but that he had kept a syringe he had used that most likely had Clemens’s DNA and steroid residue on it. It was incontrovertible evidence that Clemens was lying, McNamee said.

“Despite my misgivings about Roger, I have always been loyal to a fault, a trait that has gotten me into trouble in the past,” McNamee told the committee. “Even though I saved the material, I never considered using it.”

The Real Victims?
Lost occasionally in the drama of the hearings this spring has been the original reason members of Congress started rattling the batting cages of professional baseball so many years ago—the drugs’ impact on young people. “Most people look at sports simply as entertainment, and they don’t really get emotionally tied up in it,” says Washington Times sports columnist Tim Lemke. “As long as sports leagues are doing something about the issue, I think fans are pretty content. Congress is sort of overreaching here with the Roger Clemens situation, which turned out to be over the top and not remotely connected to the original purpose here—protecting kids and public health.”

Members defend their interest in steroids, raising the specter that teen athletes could end up the real victims in this drama. “Sometimes the media concerns me because they seem to think that the committee is just showboating,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told committee members. “The reason why we started these hearings from the very beginning is because we were concerned that young men and women were taking these substances, trying to emulate their sports heroes.”

Cummings’ concern may be warranted. A survey of adolescents in grades 8 through 12 shows there is cause for alarm. Sixty-five percent of steroid users were willing to use a performance-enhancing drug if they thought it would help them reach their athletic goals, even if it might harm their health. And 57 percent of users were willing to take a drug even if it would shorten their life, the survey found.

Published in January 2008, the survey in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise showed 1.6 percent or about 50 of 3,200 high school students polled reported using anabolic steroids. Conducted over 2005 and 2006, the survey polled students in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Many antidrug leaders worry that teenagers, intoxicated with immortality, have few fears about the long-term consequences of doping, and they are willing to take the risk to follow in their hero’s footsteps. “Kids aren’t stupid,” says Housman of the Hooton Foundation. “How many kids wear jerseys? They know who and what they’re cheering for. They know what it takes to make it to the big leagues. If that bar is artificially set because some percentage of athletes are inflating it then they’ll figure out a way to get there.”

But not everyone is convinced that kids will adopt juicing because a ballplayer does, pointing out the vast majority of teens are not interested in steroids or HGH. “I think it may be overstated in a way,” says Harold Henderson, an executive vice president for the National Football League. “I think it’s clear that people who are successful at sports become the role models for people who aspire to be successful. Every kid who plays football or not, or wishes he played football or not, would like to emulate the heroes of the gridiron.

“But we have seen substantial evidence that high school use of steroids is much more frequent for cosmetic reasons than for athletic enhancement.”

However, after McGwire said he used androstenedione, sales of the drug soared.

Four states—Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas—are testing high school athletes for steroids. New Jersey was the first state to implement testing in the 2006–07 academic year. The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association spent $175 for each test, examining 500 of 10,000 New Jersey athletes the first year. Only one teen athlete tested positive.

“Some people believe testing is not the only or perhaps the best way to deal with the problem of steroids because education is an important tool, too,” says Bruce Howard, publications and communications director for the National Federation of State High School Associations, the nationwide trade group for state athletic associations. “Testing is very expensive, and I think some states are not necessarily convinced that it’s the best way to use the money.”

Cracking Down Again
If Congress isn’t quite buying baseball’s new self-righteousness about drug testing, or even the claims that other professional sports leagues are doing their best with voluntary testing policies, it’s understandable. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest it is difficult to put this genie back into the bottle.

That’s why there has been some interest in Congress to classify HGH as a Schedule III drug. By making HGH a Schedule III drug, possessing the drug without a prescription would be illegal. Today, it is a felony to distribute HGH without a prescription, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If the Senate bill sponsored by Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.) becomes law, it would equate HGH with steroids and place it on the list of drugs covered by the Controlled Substances Act or CSA.

The CSA was amended to include anabolic and androgenic steroids as Schedule III substances in 1991. Since then, PED technology has raced ahead of the law, forcing lawmakers to add new steroid-based substances over time. McGwire’s drug of choice during the 1998 home run race, androstenedione, was added to the CSA in 2004.

Being on the CSA list is important because it requires legitimate manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers to register with the DEA and keep tabs on production and sales. Additionally, any wholesale distributors, doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies distributing the drug are required to register with the DEA.

Schumer believes HGH needs to be treated this way because “when it is misused it can have disastrous results.”

Another proposal, offered by Grassley, would make it illegal to sell dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) to anyone under 18. DHEA is a dietary supplement that some athletes are using as an alternative to anabolic steroids.

But not everyone is convinced dozens of cases in pro sports are worth changing the laws of the land, or even requiring mandatory testing for adults and teens. “We go and watch sporting events because of the amazing feats these guys are able to perform,” says John Lott Jr., the author of Freedomnomics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland. “If they’re able to do a bit better job with performance-enhancing drugs, then these athletes should be able to make the choice. They take risks all the time. We pay to watch them take those risks. Why are we interested in legislating against these risks but not against others?”

It is a question circulating in the blogosphrere as well. HGH defenders were upset with the Senate’s plans to approve the Schumer-Grassley bill in late March, letting out a howl, “I am saying that if you want to buy injectable HGH from Canada or from USA distributors, you had better do it now,” as the author of the blog, HGH Truths, wrote. “No more procrastination. Just make your purchase and stop trying to compare them all.” (Schumer pulled the bill in late March from the Senate’s unanimous consent calendar to rewrite its language.)

Congress also is considering meddling in an area that is bound to raise the ire of professional sports officials—mandating national testing for professional sports leagues.

Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection of the House Commerce Committee, polled the league commissioners during his panel’s hearing in late February, quizzing them on whether they would support a mandated testing program. The answer was a loud, resounding, and unanimous “no.”

“Federal legislation in this area is not necessary for the NBA,” said National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern, in response to Rush. “Nor do I believe that a uniform, federally mandated approach to drug testing for all sports leagues would be appropriate.”

But Rush is not making any promises to follow their lead, noting that despite the league commissioners’ pronouncements, he did not think they had it “fully under control.”

Mandates don’t sail with the pro sports leagues, or the unions, because there is a belief the current voluntary system, which is costly and appears to work, is perfectly fine. “Sports leagues can’t simply put in place policies as if it’s a dictatorship,” says Lemke. “Everything goes through collective bargaining. Most people understand that the steroids testing policies in place are pretty good, especially given the fact everything has to be approved by a union. The job of union leaders is to look out for their players and not to give too much away. They’ve had to walk a fine line there.”

There also is some resentment that sports figures are being picked on—and their privacy violated—while the real abusers in local gyms are being ignored by law enforcement and prosecutors. “Why let steroid use be rampant down at Gold’s gym but legislate against it in sports leagues?” asks the NFL’s Henderson. “If you want to do something about it, get it off the Internet. Ban the nonmedical use of it. Devote some resources to law enforcement and dry it up.”

Not surprisingly, PED users oppose any intervention by the federal government, whether it be in the way professional sports handles PED use or in the way federal officials regulate use of HGH and other substances now and into the future.

“There are two real areas of concern for steroid users,” says Roberts of Steroids.com. “One is that they oppose attempts to limit their access and limit their personal freedom to use steroids. Nobody is out there turning alcohol or cigarettes into Schedule III drugs. Why are they doing it for steroids when the evidence isn’t there that they consistently damage health?

“And what really bothers them is that the changes in the law in the early 1990s created a booming black market for steroids. Trust me, people would rather get them through their doctor than pay more on the black market. Any new changes in the law are bound to make it worse.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is deciding how courts should punish individuals convicted of trafficking HGH. The commission has been slow to adopt guidelines because there have been so few cases, but members are expected to act by May, giving Congress until November to disapprove of the guidelines, or they take effect. While the law sets a five-year penalty for individuals caught distributing HGH without a prescription and 10 years for those caught selling to a minor, the commission has yet to determine how to quantify HGH possession or how judges should sentence HGH distributors within the current limits.

To Cheat or Not to Cheat
Underlying the public conversation about the dos and don’ts of PEDs are deeper philosophical questions about fair play and honesty in sports. Sure, HGH and steroids give athletes an edge, but are they fair? Do they tear at the fabric of the American social contract by allowing some to bend or even break the rules to get ahead?

“No one wants to believe that to be able to compete, they have to start ingesting substances that many people believe are harmful to your health,” says Henderson. “People shouldn’t be put into a position where to compete for a job and playing time they have to subject themselves to something harmful. It isn’t what we’re about.”

Regulating PEDs then isn’t a trivial pursuit for Congress, many argue, although the hearings may strain the public’s patience with the congressional penchant for praising each other. In weighing future legislative solutions, members of Congress will have to consider the medical evidence, the legal implications, and the effect on the nation’s youth. It may even be asked again to weigh in on the fairness question.

“If baseball and sports are filled with people who are dishonest and cheating, is that affecting the public welfare?” says Lemke of the Washington Times. “I’m not sure, but maybe it’s a question that’s worth asking.”

Of course, it is possible Congress won’t find any lasting solution to PEDs, confounded by the always-changing drug technology, the recalcitrance of the American people, and the irresistible lure of perpetual youth. It is a prospect that worries PED opponents who fear Congress won’t have the stomach to follow through on PED abuse by mandating national testing and enforcing tough laws against the rogue distributors making millions of dollars in sales off the Internet.

“The problem is the lowest common denominator factor, and we see it so often in the law,” says Housman. “In every single sport, the majority if not the vast majority of athletes are clean or want to be clean. But there will always be people who will want to race to the bottom. We just shouldn’t follow them there.”

Sarah Kellogg, a freelance writer who lives in Washington, D.C., wrote most recently about the subprime mortgage meltdown in February’s magazine.