September 10, 2014
Supplements, steroids and unsuspecting customers

Train harder
It isn’t just the illegal stuff that consumers need to worry about, though. Shady supplements are all around us. The media and the message urge kids as well as coaches and parents to head off to the nearest GNC to buy supplements that will help turn them into the next LeBron James or Diana Taurasi. Americans love their supplements, spending upward of $32.5 billion on these products. They’re safe! They’re natural!
Except they’re not. Fifteen percent of supposedly natural supplements sold in the U.S. in 2001 and 2002 were laced with anabolic steroids. Marketing urging us to build better bodies through supplements has increased dramatically since 2002, raising the specter that supplements are even more adulterated with illicit anabolics than they were a decade ago. While supplements are not free from oversight (a common misperception), the oversight is far from ideal.
Dietary supplements are subject to regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission. The FDA’s authority was codified in 1994 by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which says that those who manufacture and distribute supplements cannot sell products that are adulterated or falsely labeled. However, the DSHEA gave supplement makers responsibility for policing themselves. Aside from the obvious foxes-guarding-the-henhouse problems that presents, it is important to recognize that even for companies with the best intentions, detection of anabolic steroids is complex and costly, necessitating sophisticated approaches (such as gas or liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry). In part, these approaches are expensive because they are designed to identify known and specific compounds by chemical fingerprints. As important, each new designer drug is different enough to slip under the radar.
Designer drugs
In the face of this challenge, the House of Representatives subcommittee on health unanimously voted in June to forward a bill (H.R. 4771) that will not only add 27 new designer drugs to the list of regulated anabolic steroids but will make it easier for the attorney general to identify legally sold commercial products that contain illicit anabolic steroids. The bill is important in providing much needed flexibility for the federal government to help beef up oversight of the contents of dietary supplements. The bill received unanimous support from both parties in the House and from five major dietary supplement industry associations, including the United Natural Products Alliance and the Council for Responsible Nutrition.
Better regulations to facilitate oversight and actually knowing what is in that canister of MusclePharm® Arnold Schwarzenegger Series Arnold Iron Whey™ Chocolate are two different things. Despite new federal laws, testing for anabolic steroids in supplements will continue to be expensive, and new and undetectable designer drugs will continue to be developed at a rate that outpaces scientists’ ability to detect them. With that in mind, when you pick up that bottle of multivitamins, the best advice is still caveat emptor: It may contain stanozolol.
Better yet, buy an apple.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/supplements-steroidsandunsuspectingcustomers.html