The Big Steroids Bust

It has been four years since the authorities raided BALCO, revealing a who's who of athletes who were big fans of the San Francisco area lab's nutritional products and altering forever our view of some of the landmark achievements in sports history.

The lab turned out to be a hotbed of performance-enhancing drugs, including human growth hormone and designer steroids that were undetectable by the existing tests. As a result a handful of people—no athletes, but one prominent track coach—went to jail, a few track stars were suspended from their sport, and some superstars, notably Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, had their reputations tarnished. Both deny ever taking performance-enhancing drugs, and no punitive action has been taken against either.

The naifs among us were stunned by the parade of prominent athletes and BALCO customers before a federal grand jury. (A related federal grand jury is reportedly investigating possible perjury and other charges against Bonds.) The cynics like me were saying, "BALCO can hardly be the only lab in America. Where do all the other athletes get their drugs?"

This week we got something of an answer. As first reported by ESPN magazine, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency capped an 18-month investigation dubbed "Raw Deal" with a series of raids across the country on illegal steroids operations. Over 18 months, aided by authorities in nine countries including China, the DEA shut down 56 labs in 27 states, arrested more than 120 people and seized more 11 million doses of steroids, as well as 500 pounds of raw steroid powder, the equivalent of more than 11 million doses of steroids. While no professional athletes have yet been implicated, a DEA agent told ESPN that a database of clients was still being compiled. And if they are clients, it's time to start naming names.

The massive operation, coming on top of another investigation of HGH distribution that has been linked to such prominent athletes as the New England Patriots' star safety Rodney Harrison and baseball sluggers Rick Ankiel and Troy Glaus—and the stripping of Floyd Landis's Tour de France championship—is another reminder that the problem of performance-enhancing drugs is not isolated but rather epidemic. And though Chinese cooperation was cited, China has also been identified as a major source of steroid powder as well as the number one supplier of HGH to what is reportedly a $600 million black-market industry. And it's hard to imagine that factories are operating on that scale in China without somebody, likely many bodies, turning a blind eye.

That might be less embarrassing to the Chinese if they weren't welcoming the world to Beijing this summer for the Olympics. But with the exposure of these Chinese drug operations coming on top of major food and drug scandals, massive recalls of Chinese-made toys and other products, and the usual array of human rights charges, China's coming-out party may not be suitable for world consumption.