The Performance- Enhancement Pipeline
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BY SHAUN ASSAEL ON THURSDAY, SEPT. 20, MORE THAN 100 U.S. DRUG Enforcement Administration agents began to fan out across 27 states, knocking down doors in suburban HGH cul-de-sacs and pushing their way into basements and kitchens. Their targets: dozens of homemade- THE PERFORMANCE- drug labs that had taken root in the shadows of ENHANCEMENT schools and supermarkets and now produced and PIPELINE IS GUSHING. sold steroids, human growth hormone, even Viagra. THE SOURCE IS HIDING The owners weren’t exactly secretive. One Long IN PLAIN SIGHT Island man had 800,000 doses of raw steroid powder stacked in plain view in his garage, right next to his shiny new Corvette; nearby, a locker housed empty vials and printed address labels for thousands of clients throughout the country. An electrician who MADE IN was running another lab, in New Jersey, had stashed 40,000 doses in his basement, along with the tub and centrifuge he used to turn the powder into CHINA street-ready drugs. In a third raid, on a Midwestern home, the living room floor was so thick with steroid powder that agents left footprints behind. 91 C M Y K C M Y K MADE IN CHINA By the time “Operation Raw Deal” ran its course match it against her own. But her British four days later, 124 people had been arrested and boss intervenes. Glancing at the wrinkled 56 labs shut down. Hundreds of thousands of inter- paper, he shoos away the prospective cepted e-mails went into a database of names that buyer and his translator. “We may not be the agents promise will lead to more arrests down the best place for you,” he says, wary of THE HGH the line. breaking American laws. What links these raids isn’t the intended destina- Steroids are a controlled substance in CONNECTION tions of the drugs—pro athletes, gym rats, even the States, so before a drug company high school kids—it’s their source: China. Raw Deal may sell them here, it has to register represents more than a year of tracing this with the Food and Drug Administration. 1. The segment of DNA responsible for growth hormone production is placed Mainland-to-Main Street pipeline. In addition to Buyers must be licensed by the DEA. into bacterial cultures to replicate. The the arrests and seizures made on these shores, DEA By Sept. 23, Raw Deal had Anyone with a legitimate need— growth hormone is then isolated and agents also identified 37 Chinese factories they busted 56 labs in 27 states, doctors, dentists, pharmacies—may get removed in a purification process, leaving blame for juicing most of the underground trade. seizing 11.4 million doses of a license. A sports-related website may a pure powder known as somatropin. It’s the latest embarrassment for a Chinese steroids. not. If a manufacturer sells to an 2. Somatropin is shipped in overnight government that is going to remarkable lengths to American who doesn’t have a proper ESS EXPEXPRESR mailers to the U.S. (It is odorless and make sure everything is squeaky-clean for next license, “a crime has been committed as thus undetectable.) A single gram of summer’s Olympic Games, in Beijing. An official soon as those drugs hit the U.S.,” says raw powder (cost: $3,000) will yield campaign urges citizens to smile when they meet DEA spokesman Steve Robertson. roughly 3,000 doses. foreigners. The worst-polluting factories within 30 This owner of an HGH lab in Still, in an economy in which the 3. In the lab, the powder is diluted by miles of Beijing will be closed and more than a average laborer makes $232 a month, a Long Island, N.Y., was one of 124 combining it with a mixer such as baking million cars banished from the roads three months HGH are a significant chunk of that business, and In fact, the World Anti-Doping Agency believes arrests in the federal crackdown. couple of thousand dollars goes a long soda and dissolving it in water. The result- before the opening ceremonies to give the city’s despite a government-licensing process for drug Chinese-made growth hormone dominates the inter- way. The farther one ventures into ing solution is doled out into 10-ml vials. sickly orange sky a chance to breathe. Beijing’s manufacturers, both are widely available to anyone national underground doping trade. As one supple- the Expo hall, the more it seems official Weather Manipulation Office even plans to with an easy-to-get prescription. ments-industry figure with experience in China puts the exhibitors are willing to overlook 4. The vials are placed in a machine called a lypholizer, which freeze-dries the liquid seed clouds with chemicals that will induce an early In anticipation of the Olympics, the Beijing it, “People there will make whatever you want. They New Exposition Centre for the Convention on the rules. into 3 mg of powder. rain and guarantee clear skies for the Games. Organizing Committee has pledged to conduct more will in Eastern Europe too, but the Chinese are Pharmaceutical Ingredients Expo. Factory owners Wedged into a long aisle of displays, a But it will take more than smiles and blue skies drug tests than any previous host nation has (see better and faster and do it with less hassle.” from Beijing to Gansu pour in to what is being young woman from a steroids company 5. The vials are sold in kits (cost: from to conceal the tide of Chinese pharmaceuticals that Coming Clean, below), and Chinese lawmakers have On a recent trip to Shanghai, we found out just billed as “the biggest pharmaceutical ingredients based in Hunan province takes our list. $500 to several thousand dollars) and currently feeds the world’s underground doping forbidden anyone from selling or providing doping how accommodating these drug companies can be. exhibition in the world.” They’re here to meet “We have all of these,” she says. Asked if include a sterile saline solution. End users mix the solution with the powder economy. Over the past seven years, the size of substances to athletes, coaches or sports federa- Fortune 500 executives who are in the market for shipping to the U.S. is a problem, she to create injectable doses of HGH. China’s drug industry has ballooned from $22 billion tions from any country. But not even the Chinese IT’S A sweltering June day, and thousands of drug raw materials that will become pain medicines and replies, “Is Federal Express okay? We do it to an estimated $67 billion. Steroid powders and government can control everything. manufacturers have set up shop at the Shanghai herbal teas and antiviral drugs. Friendly faces and for our other American clients.” four-color brochures are the eager come-on of Her openness is no anomaly. At the China’s pharmaceutical industry. booth of a small company from China’s southern can be made with relative ease.” By noon, the exhibition hall teems with people; Zhejiang province, a young woman quotes the Another exporter agrees to sell us stanozolol, millions of dollars have already changed hands. seductive price of about $266 for a kilo of testos- the drug that got Ben Johnson stripped of his E E Under the circumstances, a writer from The terone. That weight can be converted into 10,000 gold in Seoul and Oriole Rafael Palmeiro L COMING CLEAN N O Magazine has no trouble posing as the owner of a single doses at $12.50 a pop, or $125,000, once it suspended for 10 games. The exporter suggests we S A J Y sports-nutrition website with a pocketful of cash hits the street. “Selling these supplements is use another chemical’s name on the shipping CHINA’S DOPING CONTROL CENTER RACES TO GET READY FOR THE GAMES B S N label to avoid detection. “They can call it a O I T Wu Moutian, head of China’s Olympic organizers are the headmaster’s office A million things,” says a veteran U.S. drug agent. R T Doping Control Center, is counting on him to burnish held 300 doses of EPO S U “The bottom line is, we don’t have enough agents L L already losing sleep over China’s rogue image. Doping and 141 bottles of steroids. I ; ) THE FARTHER ONE VENTURES to man our import facilities. That’s why this stuff 2 next summer’s Olympics, not rumors have dogged its Zhao Jian, head of the Anti- ( A E is getting in literally by the boatload.” to mention his government’s national teams for years. In Doping Commission of the D INTO THE EXPO HALL, THE Y vow to host the cleanest 1993, the country’s previ- Chinese Olympic Committee, S E American efforts to stanch the flow have been T Games ever. “I never had ously unheralded female says the bust proves China’s R U MORE IT SEEMS THE EXHIBITORS mixed. At the end of 2005, the DEA scored a major O experience organizing such distance runners set three seriousness. “If we hear of C ; T a big lab,” he says. world records in one week. someone using drugs,” he A coup with Operation Gear Grinder, which shut W ARE WILLING TO OVERLOOK O Don’t worry, he’ll have Their coach, Ma Junren, says, “we will show up to R down eight Mexican pharmaceutical companies W help. Lab directors from credited turtle blood and their house.” E THE RULES. R that were swamping the U.S.