What's the Beef?

Every day, it seems, brings another revelation of steroid use among famous athletes. Barry Bonds may have used them; Mark McGwire probably did; Jose Canseco definitely did. Lyle Alzado claimed they contributed to the brain cancer that killed him at age 42. Despite the threat of regular testing, Olympic shot-putters and power-lifters have juiced with regularity. Bill Romanowski reportedly was on steroids with he bashed Oakland Raider teammate Marcus Williams in the face during a team practice. Newly acquired Bronco punter Todd Sauerbrun was identified in a CBS report as one of three Carolina Panthers who obtained illegal steroid prescriptions in South Carolina. Broncos wide receiver Adrian Madise and Rockies minor-league outfielder Jorge Piedra have tested positive for the drugs within the past year.

Yet it is significant, Collins notes, that none of these people -- or any of the hundreds of other famous athletes whose names have popped up in connection with steroid use -- have been criminally prosecuted for using illegal drugs. This despite the fact that keeping steroids out of sports was a driving force behind the passage of the 1990 law criminalizing anabolics.

"The media has presented two faces of steroid users: high-paid athletes and teenagers," Collins says. "But both of these populations represent a minority of steroid users. The typical non-medical steroid user is a 25- to 45-year-old male, gainfully employed; a health-conscious non-smoker who spends a lot of time in the gym. His diet is superior to the average person's, by far. And he's using steroids not to cheat in any sports, but strictly for cosmetic purposes. And, more often than not, he's also the one getting busted."

"I limited myself," Mike says of his booming anabolic steroid business. "I'm sure I could've gotten bigger if I'd wanted to."

Still, he didn't want to attract attention. The Colorado middleman tried to be careful with all his newfound money, spending it judiciously and in reasonable amounts. "You take trips, you pay cash for stuff, buy a car for cash out of the paper. A little work on the house."

A thousand miles away, though, Mike's empire was starting to crumble. His main supplier, with whom he combined and traded wholesale orders, was under surveillance by the Drug Enforcement Administration. In January 2001, the DEA raided Eric Stetzel's East Texas house, finding "large volumes of packaged and unpackaged anabolic steroids."

According to U.S. Attorney Randall Blake, Mike and Eric had "met over the Internet and discovered they had a common interest in steroids." Blake says they traded supplies back and forth. When contacted by the cops, Mike's partner rolled on him, and the DEA turned its attention toward Denver.

After several months of watching Mike's business over the Internet, the cops decided it was time to shut Mike down. The target claims he knew about it before they arrived: "I got a tip from a cop, one of my customers, that they were coming," he says. "I basically cleaned house. There was nothing here when they arrived."

Authorities had not failed to notice, however, that Mike was making an unusual number of trips to his local King Soopers to pick up mail from Western Union. Sometimes he picked up forty orders in a single day. And the one thing that Mike didn't purge from his house was his computer, which was seized and scoured for information related to Mike's drug business.

Together with the evidence garnered at Stetzel's house, the computer had just enough information on it to put Mike out of business. Although he wasn't arrested the day his home was searched, Mike was indicted in August 2002 and charged with conspiracy to distribute Schedule III drugs.

He agreed to plead guilty, and in November 2002 became one of the few who have actually spent time behind bars for steroids. In early 2004, he began serving a 366-day sentence in federal prison. He was released this past winter after serving ten months, most of it at the federal penitentiary in Englewood.

Today Mike works in the lawn-care business. Short and stocky, with clear blue eyes, he's lost some of his competition muscle definition and wouldn't stand out in a crowd; even so, he continues to push significant iron. He still takes steroids, but now he has a prescription. "I have naturally low testosterone levels," he explains. "Technically, I take it for health reasons. Of course," he adds, "when I start training again, there'll be people who'll say I'm taking it for my weightlifting."

Although he insists that he takes full responsibility for breaking the law, he adds that he doesn't consider himself a drug-abuser -- at least not in the traditional sense. This veteran claims he wasn't addicted and never knocked over a liquor store to feed his Deca habit. Moreover, he notes that he never suffered any physical or mental problems from taking anabolics -- and he doesn't know anyone who has.

"Steroid users put themselves in a different category," he says. "It's going to sound comical, but I'm not a criminal."

Five months ago, the latest anti-steroid law, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004, went into effect. Unlike the old law, the new statute contains a laundry list of steroids that are specifically banned. (Included in it is tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, the drug at the center of the BALCO scandal that has implicated many athletes in the San Francisco Bay area.) The law also makes several subtle but important wording changes. For example, it removes the qualification that steroids must be compounds related to testosterone that "promote muscle growth."