MSN Steroid story

[candyman md]

Did anybody read about this story?

Steroid dealers use ruse to sell wares on eBay
Illegal drugs listed as books to evade detection, MSNBC.com finds

A recent eBay auction offers a "book/pamphlet on Dbol ," a common dodge used by sellers of illegal steroids on the Internet auction site.
SPECIAL REPORT
By Mike Brunker
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 5:30 p.m. ET Jan. 20, 2005While law enforcement agencies and professional sports organizations say they are doing everything they can to muscle anabolic steroids off playing fields and out of gyms, the drugs remain readily available to anyone either blind to the risks or willing to gamble their health in pursuit of a perfect set of “ripped" pecs. Until last week such rash purchasers didn’t even have to leave their homes to procure the illegal strength-building drugs — they merely had to log onto eBay.

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The public drug dealing on eBay screeched to a halt last week after a three-month investigation by MSNBC.com, when a phone call to eBay’s spokesman to inquire about the steroid sales triggered an all-out sweep to remove all listings and threats of legal action against the sellers.

In the course of the investigation, dozens of items that appeared to be anabolic steroids were advertised and sold on eBay. A few of the auctions occurred in the open but many used the simple ruse of listing the drugs as “books about steroids” to avoid detection by the site’s security team.

‘That's our bad’
“Until you brought this to our attention, it wasn’t getting as close a look as it should have,” said Rob Chestnut, an eBay vice president, former federal prosecutor and the company’s point man on rules enforcement. “They were titling it as a book and we were missing it. That’s our bad.”

To determine whether the goods were what they were purported to be, MSNBC.com worked with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, an organization that often aids law enforcement agencies in investigations of illegal sales of prescription drugs over the Internet, to purchase some of the apparently illegal products and have them tested.

In October and November, an NABP investigator purchased four items on eBay that appeared to be steroids, paying between $90 and $140 for each order. In two cases, eBay shut down the auctions before they ran their course.

“I got a notice from eBay saying this auction was ended because of a violation of the rules, but the transaction still went through,” said the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Truth in advertising
All four products — injectable solutions in factory packaging, oral tablets labeled in Spanish as being for veterinary use and unmarked pills in a plastic bag — turned out to be just what the sellers claimed they were: anabolic steroids like Dianabol , Sustanon and testosterone propionate .


National Association of Boards of Pharmacy
Photos show the four types of steroids purchased by a National Association of Boards of Pharmacy investigator.
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All are Schedule III controlled substances under federal law, in the same class as barbiturates, LSD precursors, veterinary tranquilizers and narcotic painkillers like Vicodin. Simple possession of any Schedule III substance without a prescription is punishable by up to one year in prison and/or a minimum fine of $1,000 under federal law.

While the eBay sales represent only the visible tip of a much bigger problem of the illegal purchase of prescription drugs via the Internet, experts said the presence of steroids on the popular Web site is especially troubling because they could be seen there by the most vulnerable potential users — teens and preteens looking to quickly bulk up for school sports or add some definition to still developing bodies.

“I might search for weeks without discovering this, but I would not be surprised to learn that younger individuals would be able to find this easily and make a purchase,” said Dr. David Black, an expert on steroids and president, CEO and medical director for Aegis Sciences Corp., a Nashville, Tenn., company that tested the steroids as part of the MSNBC.com investigation.

EBay alerted about problem last year
A congressional source, who spoke with MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity, said that both eBay and the Drug Enforcement Administration also should have had little difficulty in spotting the sales, since Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, alerted them to the presence of illegal steroids on eBay during a Senate hearing last summer.

At the July 13 hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Grassley called the easy availability of steroids on eBay “outrageous and unacceptable” and noted that “young athletes can buy the needles used to inject the illegal steroids directly into their bodies on eBay.”

“To make matters worse, counterfeit steroids are being sold widely,” he said. “These fake drugs are very convincing in appearance. … Fake steroids have been known to have mixtures of cooking oil and even motor oil in them. Imagine a high school student injecting motor oil into his or her body!”

The hearing garnered no headlines, but it did result in letters being sent to both the DEA and eBay informing them of the problem and demanding action, said the source.

MSNBC.com also obtained a written statement from the DEA responding to the drug caucus in which it said it was working with eBay to prevent such sales.

“The DEA now regularly conducts ‘key-word searches’ of eBay to identify and removed steroid … listings from the auction pool,” it said. “We have also provided eBay with an extensive list of Schedule III anabolic steroids (both trade and generic names) to add to their ‘filters’ to prevent the substances from appearing on their site.”

CONTINUED
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[Hed]

theres a post in the lounge about this....


yes, its a stupid story, saying 'preteens' use it to get 'cut pecs'