Add A-Rod to the list of players now branded with the Scarlet Letter (A for Anabolic Steroids, perhaps?) According to a report on SI.com, four sources have confirmed that he was indeed juicing back in 2003. Rodriguez joins players like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro and Barry Bonds, who will be forever tarnished (and some prosecuted), not just for their illegal drug use, but also for lying about it.
And just two weeks ago, the results of Barry Bonds' urine samples were made public. The reports reveal that Bonds used injectable steroids, not just the "cream" and the "clear" — substances he claimed to have thought were arthritis cream and flaxseed oil.
It's just further affirmation of what we already know: Athletes have been using performance-enhancing drugs for years, while many people simply looked the other way. Fine. But the real question is: Can we really regulate drug use in sports — or should we even bother at all?
What follows is a really long (but really good) excerpt from our book GameFace. In this chapter, Chris examines all sides of this complicated issue. It's a fascinating topic that reaches far beyond the sports world, into Hollywood, Blackwater and the NYPD.
PUT TO THE TEST:
CAN WE TRULY GET RID OF STEROIDS?
Excerpt from GameFace (Virgin 2008)
By Erica Boeke & Chris De Benedetti
C’mon, go to an NFL game and just look around. The fans have spent the day loading up on alcohol. Plenty of the cheerleaders have had plastic surgery. The overworked coaches, with their legendary 20-hour workdays, undoubtedly are fueled by coffee or Red Bull. The players? At least some of them are on steroids or human growth hormone. The myriad in-stadium advertising includes Viagra or Levitra logos, pushing sex-enhancement pills. Major League Baseball takes the Viagra ads one step further, placing them quite visibly on the wall behind the catcher during TV telecasts. (Maybe there should be a Linda Ellerbee-hosted special on Nickelodeon for parents: “How to Handle the Kids’ Inevitable Viagra Question While Watching Sports.”)
On TV, turn the channel to professional wrestling or Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts. Then click the remote to MTV and watch hip-hop stars Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Wyclef Jean and Timbaland, whom upstate New York prosecutors said were linked to a Florida pharmacy that also allegedly provided steroids to Major League Baseball players and at least one NFL star. (Most of the accused musicians denied the reports.) Oh, and flip the channel to an old Meg Ryan movie on any given Saturday afternoon, where you’ll find that the ‘80s “girl next door” has certainly had some procedures and used some products designed to enhance her performance and longevity.
So, it’s official. The use of artificial means to “improve” oneself is everywhere. Why should it be any different with athletics? Increasingly, it’s not. The line between what’s acceptable and what’s not may be most blurred in sports. Players constantly are given mixed messages. Asking your trainer to inject you with deca-durabolin or androstenedione, to name two illegal steroids, is against the rules. But having your trainer shoot you up with cortisone or other pain-killers is perfectly legal and common practice, even though that drug is the only thing allowing your injured body to play. Until a few years ago, amphetamines reportedly were common in baseball, readily available in clubhouses for players needing an energy boost. In that world, it’s easy to see how some ballplayers could rationalize using steroids or HGH, even when everyone knows they’re illegal.
So, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to “tell these athletes they are going to be society’s last pharmacological virgins,” as John Hoberman said, a professor and author who has written extensively on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs. “There is lots of selective indignation here. There is something crazy about this. Hypocrisy is not quite strong enough a word to describe it.”
The steroid scandals have set a horrible example for kids who look up to ballplayers. But it’s hard to tell children about the evils of drug use when they grow up in a society where legal narcotics, from Prozac to Levitra to Ritalin, are widely advertised and overprescribed. “People tell kids they shouldn’t do steroids, but then the kids respond, ‘What about daddy’s Viagra? What about mommy’s Botox?’“ Hoberman said.
Hoberman, author of Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping, said the use of performance-enhancing drugs is pervasive in many parts of society. For starters, Ritalin, apparently, is the new No-Doz. Hoberman says there is an “academic doping culture” where university students are using Ritalin, not for Attention Deficit Disorder, as usual, but rather to stay awake while cramming for finals.
The nation’s colleges have nothing on Hollywood. Aging movie stars reportedly are taking steroids as never before. “Actors in Hollywood are doping more than athletes, they’re doing what they need to do to stay relevant,” said Howard Bryant, an ESPN.com columnist and author of Juicing the Game, a comprehensive book on baseball’s steroid-use epidemic.
Sylvester Stallone is proving Bryant right. Still making action movies at age 62, Stallone was caught carrying vials of human growth hormone in Australia in 2007. He didn’t seem exactly embarrassed by the HGH arrest when he told Time magazine afterwards, “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.” He added, ominously: “In 10 years, it will be over the counter.” Stallone is no different than now-disgraced Roger Clemens, who received a million-per-year contract at age 44 in 2007. The aging actor scored a lucrative two-picture deal after his latest Rambo sequel scored did big box office in 2008. Contrary to what his cop characters might say on the big screen, Stallone’s crime did pay. It paid him millions, in fact.
But what of the long-term negative effects, Sly? It’s hard to ignore the ugly statistics tied to professional wrestling and performance-enhancers. Since 1997, dozens of pro wrestlers age 45 and younger have died from health problems connected with steroids and other illegal drugs, according to a USA Today study. Just look at the sad case of Chris Benoit, a former WWE professional wrestler who killed his wife and their 7-year-old son before taking his own life. Autopsy results revealed that Benoit had steroids in his body when he died in 2007, though authorities don’t believe that a ‘roid rage contributed to the double-homicide and suicide.
GOOD COP, BAD COP
Outside of sports, steroid use has been alleged in surprising circles. Blackwater USA, to refresh your memory, is a multimillion-dollar corporation that contracts with professional soldiers to act as security in the war in Iraq and other global hot spots. In 2007, Iraqi citizens filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Blackwater alleging that 25% of its employees are on steroids, a charge that the company vehemently denied. Is there a scarier prospect than thousands of private soldiers popping steroids while handling serious weaponry in a war-torn country? Combat is ugly enough by itself. But adding steroids to the fray is just a war crime waiting to happen.
Back at home, Hoberman estimates that at least 25,000 police officers nationwide are on HGH or steroids. The cops feel like they have to bulk up to go toe-to-toe with criminals, Hoberman explained. Just as with the Blackwater allegations, the possibility is frighteningly strong that armed police officers in high-stress jobs may do serious wrongs while experiencing ‘roid rages. In January 2008, the New York Police Department found that nearly 30 of its officers were identified on a client list at a Brooklyn pharmacy that was targeted in a Federal steroid probe, according to The New York Daily News. And in 2007, six NYPD officers were caught buying steroids and tested positive for it.
The potential problems here are obvious. The next time there’s a notorious police brutality accusation, can allegations of ‘roid rage as the cause be far behind? Also, police officers are on the front lines in the government’s long-running war on drugs, which presents a pointed dilemma for authorities. “Can you wage war on drugs by using cops who are using those drugs?” Hoberman wonders. “Again, we’re back to the selective indignation problem. Cops are hard on some drugs, like cocaine and marijuana. But when they’re asked to crack down on their own officers using drugs, they’re not interested.”
Anti-steroid activists say a strong message has to be sent to steroid users or kids will imitate their sports heroes and juice up just to get the same results. In fact, that cat is already out of the bag, said Dr. Denise Garibaldi. As many as five million minors in America have used performance-enhancing drugs, she said.
Garibaldi and her husband Ray know quite well about steroids’ potentially devastating effects on a young life. Their son, Rob Garibaldi, once a promising young ballplayer, killed himself at the age of 24. Just a few years earlier, such a development would have been unthinkable to anyone who knew Rob. He was a hard-working overachiever with excellent grades and a promising sports career, despite his smallish body. He never drank alcohol or tried recreational drugs because he wanted to stay focused on playing baseball, his mother said. And it worked. He was a prep All-American from Petaluma, California, less than an hour’s drive from where his heroes, San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds and the Oakland A’s Bash Brothers, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, played professional baseball. In time, all three superstars, of course, would be implicated in steroid use. So would Garibaldi. The New York Yankees drafted him and then promptly repeated to Rob — then a scrawny 150 pounds — what he so often had heard: Get bigger. The Yankees urged him to attend USC, which was offering a scholarship, to give him time to bulk up.
Rob’s parents didn’t know that he had already started using steroids, having made his first purchase in Tijuana with buddies in the late ’90s. “They bought the steroids and were back [over the border] within an hour,” Garibaldi said. Even worse, he was using the drugs that middle-class kids buy; they’re cheaper and easier to get, but also are low quality and will do the most long-term damage to users. Wealthy ballplayers, in contrast, will get the best that money can buy. “The professionals have the advantage of affording quality substances,” she added. “What’s coming out of Mexico are veterinary steroids, not the designer stuff. They’re very dangerous.”
At USC, Rob’s drug use only increased. His parents first noticed something was wrong when they saw that he had torn his college bedroom apart during an outburst. “Everybody was using steroids there,” Garibaldi said. “I think [the coaches] were aware.” Soon, Rob’s personal issues started to overshadow his potential. He had been suffering from depression, and at one point, he even physically attacked his father when confronted about his drug use. His family and friends felt increasingly helpless, especially after a failed intervention. Finally, one day in October 2002, he took his own life.
Since then, the Garibaldis have tried to channel their grief by raising awareness about steroid use, giving public speeches and doing interviews. They took Rob’s story to the nation’s capital in 2005, where they testified at a watershed Congressional hearing on steroids in sports. Years later, parents who have children going through the same issues that Rob did will track down Denise Garibaldi and phone her for advice. California politicians are doing the same. They’ve turned to the Garibaldis for solutions, and they have worked together on legislation that would require testing for high school athletes.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
But can the problem ever be solved? The debate rages between those who take a zero-tolerance approach and those in favor of legalizing steroids and HGH.
Marvin Miller, the legendary founder of baseball’s Players’ Association, is one who is against drug-testing athletes for steroids. Citing the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he likens testing to a violation of American search and seizure laws, which state that authorities must produce evidence to a judge to obtain a warrant to search people or their property. “I have no problem with that procedure,” said Miller, now in his early-90s. “But mandatory testing of anybody and everybody in that company or industry without showing any probable cause or guilt? That, I object to. That is anti-people. It’s not allowed by government and it should not be allowed by a private employer.”
But the hands-off approach of the ’90s allowed drug use to eventually trickle down to teens, drug-testing proponents argue. Hoberman says it is possible to reduce the number of users by doing more testing and educating the public. However, “the assumption that we have a fighting chance to produce a drug-free sports culture is fading away,” Hoberman said. “The demand for [athletic] performance is accompanied by the demand for performance-enhancers. Given the money, the system of incentives, the athletes’ ambitions and the ethics-free zone in which many athletes exist, I don’t know how you’re fully going to get rid of them.”
Count us more on the side of increased drug testing. We may never totally eradicate them; authorities are always playing catch-up because the drugs are constantly evolving and may be hard to detect. But each sports league has to keep trying, if only to maintain at least a semblance of their integrity. “I know people who take that Libertarian attitude of, ‘May the best team with the better drugs win,’” writer Howard Bryant said. “For me, that’s not acceptable because I think there is too much money at stake, and too much hypocrisy.”
