Steroids

Posted for Ramsey Ferguson

This post will focus primarily on the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990.  This is where

congress declared anabolic steroids a schedule III controlled substance.  This puts steroids in

the same class as Vicodin, LSD precursors, and some veterinary tranquilizers.  There is a

specified difference between charges on personal use and intent to distribute, but this can be

skewed sometimes because while many drugs are bought and sold in small amounts where it is

more easily determined whether there is intent to distribute or not, that is not the case with

steroids. Steroids are generally bought per cycle or per couple cycles.  This means that an

individual could have massive amounts of steroids for personal use of one or a couple cycles

and it would be hard to differentiate between personal use and intent to sell.  

Many medical professionals from the FDA, DEA, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and

even the American Medical Association were called on to speak at the congressional hearings

leading up to the Steroid Control Act of 1990. Their evidence and arguments were disregarded

when congress didn’t hear what they wanted to hear. These professionals didn’t agree with

anabolic steroids being classified this way based on medical evidence, statistics, and personal

accounts, but the scare of steroids was enough to override the evidence presented to them.

That doesn’t make much sense, but time and time again throughout the semester we

have looked at examples of how what people don’t understand scares them, and often times

they are too stubborn to look at the facts that lay before them and see that some claims don’t

match reality.

The studies done on anabolic steroids seem to point towards the same conclusion that the

mental risks are greater than the physical risks when taking steroids.  There have been several

cases where a person committed suicide after taking steroids, but that makes me wonder if the

underlying depression or causes of suicide where there prior to taking the steroids.  Maybe

those psychological issues led to them being unhappy and taking steroids because they

believed that an enhanced physique would bring them happiness? That is purely speculation,

but does seem viable.

https://thinksteroids.com/articles/anabolic-steroid-control-act-wrong-prescription/

http://www.steroidabuse.com/legal-ramifications-of-steroid-abuse.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15248788