Steroid Sting Bust 120 People

I know it might seem like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I promise this story is big. Authorities arrested more than 120 people and uncovered dozens of steroid labs in an international investigation into the illicit trade of performance-enhancing drugs, federal officials announced Monday. The Drug Enforcement Administration said the investigation, called Operation Raw Deal, was assisted by the governments of nine other countries, including China. In the United States, agents seized 56 labs manufacturing anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) and seized 11.4 million doses of drugs in all, the DEA said.

One of the largest charged is a Chinese manufacturer accused of smuggling HGH in to the United States and four men who allegedly distributed drugs through a MySpace profile. DEA spokesman Michael Sanders said 143 federal search warrants were issued during the 18-month investigation, many of them since Thursday. The FBI, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Food and Drug Administration were also involved. One of the questions would be how China helped in the investigation since a company inside of China is being charged, here is your answer: "China really stepped up to the plate to help us in this investigation," DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney said in Washington.

In all, investigators seized over 500 pounds of raw ingredients from a steroid manufacture that originated in China. Other countries who participated in the investigation were Mexico, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Thailand.

This just shows how rampant the illegal drug industry is and that it isn't a problem just in the United States.

Federal Agents Seize Illegal Steroids from New Jersey Home

In Newark, New Jersey, Federal Agents raided a Jersey home and seized more than 40,000 doses of illegal anabolic steroids. The agents said that the house they raided was being used as a factory. The manufacturing was being done in the basement of the home of Alfred Scarpa, an electrician who was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Agency, agents said. Scarpa, 34 admitted that he was involved with buying, making and selling steroids. He was held without bail.

DEA Agents also seized $56,000 cash & 2 semiautomatic handguns and in the basement it was filled with "tubes, bottles, vials," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Kirsch said. The raid happened after the Feds acquired emails from Scarpa that showed that he was negotiating to buy steroid powder since at least April 2006. The DEA also found financial records showing wire transfers totaling at least $25,000 to businesses in Colonia and New Providence, some which were suppliers of steroids, the DEA said.

This story is huge because it shows that the Feds are now finding out how and where the steroids are originating. There was a story about this same thing in Yahoo! Sports that talks about how the Feds are finally figuring out where HGH is originating. The story is here: http://tinyurl.com/2kvp2e. Most of the HGH that gets into the United States for a multitude of reasons mostly comes from China. A man who in March pleaded not guilty to charges of illegally selling HGH and steroids received $108,900 for Somatropin, a generic form of HGH, which was imported from China which was in violation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules, according to the documents that were found. To understand the whole story, you will have to read the whole story by Josh Peter of Yahoo! Sports.

The scary thing that comes out of these examples and stories is that it will be hard to stop the importing of HGH from China. Again like I said in my past posts, the "steroid period" will not go away until the feds come up with a way to test for HGH. MLB officials said that the "steroid period" was gone and that we were entering the clean period of sports, but obviously they were way off. Even if say Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants really took the "cream", we as a society need to look not just at popular players that you might hate, but the players that are really nice. I don't think Bonds truthfully took steroids because if you think about it, steroids cannot and will not increase you talent as a player by just "juicing" up. The concept of steroids is to give you more stamina so you don't get injured as much and if you do get injured it will cut down on the rehab time of the injury itself. Barry Bonds is one of the most talented baseball players of all time not because of the home runs he hit, but because of the overall game he has. The guy was a stellar left fielder when he was younger and he knew the concept of hitting the ball the other way and how to on a consistent basis. The only reason baseball people hate Bonds and think he took steroids is because he is an ass to the media. If you remember, before Mark McGuire retired, he was one of the nicest and most liked persons in baseball by the media during his home run breaking period. Then, after he retired and went to the government hearing and wouldn't answer any of the questions about what he did during his career because he only wanted to talk about the future, not talk about the past. Then you had Rafael Palmero of the Baltimore Orioles pointing his figure to the panel stating he had never taken steroids and then 2-3 months later he is suspended for failing the steroid test. I can go on forever, with Sammy Sosa who had the corked bat when he played with the Cubs and then afterword denied that he had a corked bat and lied about it. I know I'm rambling on, but it all ties back to steroids and how it will change and screw people up physically. Just look at the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and all of their wrestlers sudden deaths from heart failures. Most of them were "juicing up" and the "juicing up" destroyed their bodies and with one of them destroyed his brain. Chris Benoit went off of the deep end because of taking steroids and killed his kid by smothering him/her with a pillow, then killed his wife and after killing them both hung himself in the basement of his home in Atlanta, Georgia. The investigators said that the steroids he was taking screwed up the electrical impulses in his brain and made him go off of the deep end. My next post will talk about what steroids will do to people's bodies and how it will destroy young children if they take them.
Enjoy,
Ryan

Golf Testing for Steroids & Floyd Landis Positive for Steroids

The PGA Tour will start to randomly test its players in the spring as part of an unparalleled attempt to jointly coordinate screening and policing policies worldwide. 10 substances will be banned including anabolic steroids, street drugs, blood-doping agents and artificial hormones. The European Tour, LPGA, PGA of America, U.S. Golf Association, Royal & Ancient Golf Club and Augusta National Golf Club will all be testing for the same thing as golf will try to make the testing a worldwide policy. "This is very good news for us that all of the bodies are on 'side' including the four majors," the European Tour commissioner George O'Grady said.

The testing procedures and punishments will not be set in place until at least November, but the players will most likely be tested during the season and also during the offseason like other large sports do. Golf decided to do drug testing "so we can demonstrate our sport is clean -- and we can keep it that way," Peter Dawson said, the executive director of the R&A. Peter helped lead the need for standard global testing.

The testing will cost around $1.5 million to run over the next two to three years. It was inevitable for golf to join onto the random steroid testing that most of the large sports do now. Until there is a test for HGH (human growth hormone), steroids will stay out of reach and out of our control. A good example is a new sports story that came out today (Thursday). It was about the American cycling star Floyd Landis. Floyd's 2006 Tour de France title was taken away after he tested positive for synthetic testosterone, a type of anabolic steroid that was found in Floyd's 'B' sample. The ruling, handed down nearly four months after a bizarre and bitterly fought hearing, left the American with one final way to possibly salvage his title - an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The decision was 2-1 to maintain the results of the positive drug test. "Today's ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition," U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said. Landis will now take a huge blow because for months he consistently stated that he never took drugs and that the French anti-doping agency screwed up the tests.

Obviously, Landis had something to say, "This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere," Landis said. "For the Panel to find in favor of USADA when, with respect to so many issues, USADA did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case shows that this system is fundamentally flawed. I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent." If Landis does not appeal this case, then he will be the first cyclist in the 105-year history to lose a title because of a doping offense.

This only shows even more that it doesn't matter what professional sport it is, steroid use will not slow down until an iron fist comes down and general testing is done like what the Olympics do with their possible athletes. Everybody knows that the Olympic committee is the harshest when it comes to steroid testing and they are very successful with it. We have MLB and their bullshit way of testing baseball players and how they turned their head when they knew that players like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire were "juicing" up when they were hitting 60 + homeruns. The NBA still has not used random drug tests with their athletes and who blames them, they already have bigger problems than the NFL and MLB combined. They have NBA refs betting on games and players running up into the stands and taking swings at fans. David Stern will never get the Detroit/Pacers game out of his history…the NBA will be tainted because of the game where Ron Artest was suspended for the whole NBA season without pay.

The next sport to test for drugs will be tennis, mark my words because they will be pestered by the media until they do it also. People will start to second guess tennis stars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nedal and ask if they "juice" like Jason Giambi.