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Online drug stores fuel steroid boom

"I don't know at the moment where to get them but within 24 hours I could find out -- it's that easy. You just find out where the local heavy body-builders go and you go to that gym."

Ivan Waddington, doping expert

Sixteen years after Ben Johnson was stripped of his Olympic gold medal, the banned drug that killed his career is widely available on the Internet.

Stanozolol is one of a huge number of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs offered on online pharmacies on the Web.

One Taiwan-registered site offers the drug below a speed-blurred photograph of sprinters leaving the starting blocks, recalling the Canadian athlete's disgrace at the Seoul Games.

Two hundred 5mg tablets of the "popular all-purpose steroid" retail for US$95 on this site.

Another, registered in the Czech Republic, has special offers on steroids such as Dianabol, Deca-Durabolin and Parabolan, under the slogan "Every man can and must be powerful."

The sites promise to ship orders worldwide, in small unmarked packages designed to evade the attention of customs authorities.

Some use only difficult-to-trace money transfer services. Others also accept credit cards.

"It's very easy to get steroids, or sell steroids, via the Internet," detective inspector Gunnar Hermansson, from the drugs unit of Sweden's National Criminal Intelligence Service, said. "It's easier to get in contact with people to buy and sell things."

Anabolic steroids, synthetic drugs that promote muscle growth by mimicking male sex hormones, are illegal in many countries, including the US and Britain, and have been banned from competitive sports since the 1970s.

Side-effects can include breast development and genital shrinking in men, masculinisation in women and increased risks of heart attacks, strokes and liver problems.

Nonetheless, they remain popular because of the boost they can give to athletes, particularly bodybuilders.

Some Web sites acknowledge their downsides -- one Slovenian-registered Web site contains detailed information about side-effects such as increased aggression.

However, the site advises customers how to inject steroids and provides answers to questions such as "What accounts for the incredible pump I get while I am using anabolic steroids?" and "Do most professional bodybuilders use steroids?" -- the author says 90 percent of national amateur level bodybuilders do.

Two years ago, a report by the British Medical Association estimated that as many as 150,000 Britons, roughly four out of every 1,000 adults, abused steroids at dangerous doses.

The same year a British medical journal reported the case of a 30-year-old bodybuilder who suffered blackouts after taking Dianabol, a steroid, and a second drug, bromocriptine, which he said he obtained over the Internet.

In a presentation in November 2002, detective inspector Hermansson warned that illegal steroid selling was a huge business that went largely unregulated in most of the world.

"Many of the underground suppliers of anabolic steroids make their business through Internet and e-mail orders, which makes it very easy to order and pay, and wait for a quick and discreet delivery at the door," he told a conference in Copenhagen.

"Internet and open borders, especially within Europe, make it easier for black-market actors and more difficult for law-enforcement authorities to stop this trade."

Doping expert Ivan Waddington of England's University College Chester said he thought the Internet had arrived too late to disrupt well-established methods of distributing steroids.

"I don't know at the moment where to get them but within 24 hours I could find out -- it's that easy," he said.

"You just find out where the local heavy body-builders go and you go to that gym.

"Certainly there is now quite a lot of information on the Internet about how to use drugs, how to stack them [use them in combination], and when to come off them before a competition."

Waddington said online vendors might also appeal to image-conscious teenagers who sought steroids for cosmetic reasons but lacked the contacts to obtain them face-to-face.

"Some of the sources which are available on the Internet suggest you can use steroids perfectly safely if you use them in the correct manner."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the world of online steroids is riven with paranoia, with many sites discussing which other sites are scams that will not deliver the goods as promised.

On one US discussion board, opinion was divided over whether "international pharmacies" could be trusted.

"Good luck bro, kinda hard to find a legit one out there," one contributor wrote, although others disagreed.

The site provided a forum for its 4,000-odd members to discuss steroid use and techniques, with 15 pages of links to technical discussions about anabolic steroids.
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