Young Kids and Roids!

This is from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/na...51ce59c8625e9a


Body-Conscious Boys Adopt Athletes' Taste for Steroids

November 22, 2002
By TIMOTHY EGAN


CLEARFIELD, Utah - They want to be buff. They want to be ripped. They want to glisten with six-pack abs and granite pecs like the hulks on Wrestlemania.

But more than ever, American boys are trying to find designer bodies not just in a gym but also in a syringe of illegal steroids, or a bottle of the legal equivalent from a mall nutrition store, law enforcement officials, doctors and teenagers say.

Steroid use has long been widespread among athletes looking for a quick way to add strength or speed. Athletes "on the juice," as the term goes, can be found in nearly any high school or college or among the ranks of top professional
athletes.

But now boys as young as 10, and high school students who do not play team sports, are also bulking up with steroids or legal derivatives like androstenedione - known as steroid precursors - simply because they want to look good. The growing use of such substances, which doctors say can lead to side effects that basically shut down normal adolescent development in male bodies, has also created
problems for law enforcement.

The narcotics police who usually spend their days raiding methamphetamine laboratories in this prosperous county along the Wasatch Mountain front got some idea of the market demand earlier this year when they broke up a high school steroid ring. Three students were caught after returning from Mexico in a van with steroids and other drugs bought at a veterinary supply store in Tijuana, the
police said.

The plan was to sell the steroids - the possession or dealing of which is a felony - to fellow high school students throughout Davis County, the police said.

"These are injectable steroids, very powerful, and these kids weren't just going to sell them to the football players," said Dave Edwards, an officer with the Davis
Metro Narcotics Strike Force. "They had a lot of customers, kids who will do anything to get that buff look."

New York has its suburban gyms where some bodybuilders drink protein shakes laced with steroids or androstenedione, known as andro, and California has its
beach body shops where people take a similar path to what has been called reverse anorexia.

But it is in the high schools of middle America, and the gyms that cater to students off campus, where use of body-enhancing drugs has taken off - particularly among
nonathletes. And for all the recent concern about an epidemic of youth obesity, the mania over instant bulk shows another side of the struggle for self-image.

"Everybody wants to be big now," said Zeb Nava, a senior at Clearfield High School who has added nearly 50 pounds of muscle mass over the last two years by weight lifting, he said, adding that he had avoided all supplements. "The
majority now are guys that don't do it for sports. They do it for girls. For the look."

Nearly half a million teenagers in the United States use steroids each year, according to the latest national survey done for federal drug agencies. While the use of other illegal drugs has fallen or leveled off, the number of high school seniors who had used steroids within a month increased nearly 50 percent last year, the survey found.

Among high school sophomores, steroid use more than doubled nationwide from 1992 to 2000, according to the annual survey used by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Another survey, done last year for Blue Cross Blue Shield, found that use of steroids and similar drugs increased by 25 percent from 1999 to 2000 among boys ages 12 to 17. This study, a national survey of 1,787 students, also found that 20 percent of the teenagers who admitted taking body-enhancing drugs did it because they wanted to look bigger, not because of sports.

Preston Alberts, a senior at Clearfield High who has been working with weights in the school gym for three years, said he had seen a different kind of lifter of late in the weight room: the vanity bodybuilder.

"We notice a lot of kids now, they just want this certain type of body - with the abs and the ripped chest - and they want to get it quick," Mr. Alberts said.

Sales of legal, largely unregulated steroid precursors like andro have soared among the young, according to recent Congressional testimony by doctors and officials in the supplement industry, prompting a move in Congress to have
them treated as illegal drugs when they are not prescribed. These precursors, which metabolize into steroids once ingested, are perhaps the main reason why sports nutrition supplements are the largest-growing segment of the $18 billion dietary supplement industry.

Andro use increased after Mark McGwire, the former St. Louis Cardinals slugger, said he used it. Mr. McGwire cautioned that people under 18 should not follow his
example.

Steroid precursors can bought over the counter at health stores or supermarkets. While the labels say people under 18 should not take them, they are aggressively marketed over the Internet with promises like, "You'll get huge!"

Representative John E. Sweeney, Republican of New York, said he found out about the bodybuilding drugs through his teenage son.

"My 16-year-old son, who goes to a Catholic military school, told me some of his fellow students were using andro and he wanted to know what I thought," Mr. Sweeney said. "I was stunned. He said some of the kids were taking
andro and getting really big."

Recently, Mr. Sweeney co-sponsored a bill, along with Representative Tom Osborne, Republican of Nebraska, to make over-the-counter sales of steroid precursors illegal. Mr. Osborne, who was coach of the University of Nebraska
football team for 25 years, said the precursors "have the same effects and dangers as steroids."

Similarly, a number of pediatricians said in Congressional testimony last summer that they did not distinguish between illegal steroids and legal precursors.

While some of the products guarantee a rack of rippling muscles in five weeks or less, many of these compounds can actually stifle bone growth, lead to testicular shrinkage, liver tumors and development of male breasts, doctors warn. Some of these effects can be irreversible, like stopping bone growth in children who would otherwise continue to develop, according to recent medical testimony in Congress.
Steroids do this by falsely signaling to the body to stop producing its own testosterone.

Here at Clearfield High School about 40 miles north of Salt Lake, the school has built a large weight room to accommodate the demand by students who want to attain the look. Classes run all day, with upward of 150 students lifting weights at a time.

The principal, Mike Timothy, said he could sometimes tell which students were using steroids or precursors not just because their appearance had changed so drastically, but because they were also quick-tempered. It is called " 'roid
rage."

"Suddenly, you've got some kids who are ready to fight at the drop of a hat," Mr. Timothy said.

Although none of the students charged with bringing steroids in from Mexico went to Clearfield, the police say they had numerous customers among the students at the school, and two others in the county. The students were prosecuted in juvenile court.

"At first, the parents and some of these school officials were in denial about what's going on," said Lt. Ted Ellison of the narcotics strike force. "But since then, I've had several parents come forth saying they found syringes and pills at home. Around here, it's such a `wow.' These are good kids, from good families, no criminal records, cream of the crop."

Many in Congress are now calling for restrictions on steroid precursors and other sports supplement drugs. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who pushed
through the 1994 law, which opened the floodgates to largely deregulated sales of dietary supplements, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to see if steroid
precursors meet the definition of a controlled substance.

"It's very possible these so-called steroid precursors such as androstenedione do not meet the legal definition of a dietary supplement," Mr. Hatch said.

The supplement industry is against the effort to put a legal crimp in the precursor market. While acknowledging that the drugs can be harmful to people under 18, industry officials say they can be used legitimately by adults, to help recover from muscle injuries, for example, or to improve strength and endurance. The solution to teenage abuse is to make sure clerks do not sell them to people under 18, they say.

"I'm not supposed to use this analogy, but cigarettes are out there as well, and we are finally getting good enforcement of laws prohibiting sales of them to people
under 18," said John Cardellina of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement industry trade group.

But young bodybuilders say the pills and solutions that promise muscle makeovers are ubiquitous, legal or not.

"Guys know what the side effects are," said Mr. Alberts, the Clearfield senior. "But a lot of them just don't care. It's like, this is how you get big quick. You get on the
juice."

I hate reading bs articles like this ... I mean whats the difference this and a teenage girl taking over the counter diet pills at a drug store to look like a model on cosmo ... What are they going to banned dexitrim (sp) from wallmart now .. I think they need to look at the bigger picture ..

What about all the coke and other drugs all these highschool kids are taking? I bet more kids are getting fucked up from cocaine and other drugs then they are from Anadro and hydroxycut....

Screw the big picture. Just because young girls stick their fingers down their throat doesn't mean young guys should juice. Specially guys who have no workout history.

the answer is education, not just making it illegal. If teens know the consequences of taking juice too early, it would stop a majority. Most of the teens that juice for non-sports related reasons don't know what they are doing, or what they are taking.

I guess they'll have to show mandatory films in HS like the VD ones we used to see in the 80's... man they were scary! :D A bit of information, some scary imagery and voila... (almost 20 years later I still remember to this day the scene where the doctor rams a swab up this dudes urethra... OUCH!).

Kids are visual anyways, so there is no point in telling them until you are blue in the face... show 'em 18 year olds losing their hair, injection complications, 30 year olds with stunted growth, heck show 'em 16 year old boys with bitch tits and gyno being surgically removed.

Stop with the stupid "roid rage" bullshit and give 'em visuals of the real nasty sides. They will remember that.

Red