[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 11, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S891-S892]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WHITEHOUSE (for himself and Mr. Hatch):
  S. 2012. A bill to amend the Controlled Substances Act to more 
effectively regulate anabolic steroids; to the Committee on the 
Judiciary.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today I am pleased to join Senator 
Hatch once again in introducing the bipartisan Designer Anabolic 
Steroid Control Act. Like the legislation we introduced in 2012, this 
measure will help keep American children and families safe from 
dangerous designer drugs that masquerade as healthy dietary 
supplements.
  Doctors and scientists have long recognized the health hazards of 
non-medical use of anabolic steroids. For that reason, Congress has 
previously acted to ensure that these drugs are listed as controlled 
substances. Nonetheless, according to investigative reporting and 
Congressional testimony, a loophole in current law allows for designer 
anabolic steroids to easily be found on the Internet, in gyms, and even 
in retail stores.
  Designer steroids are produced by reverse engineering existing 
illegal steroids and then slightly modifying the chemical composition, 
so that the resulting product is not on the Drug Enforcement 
Administration's, DEA, list of controlled substances. When taken by 
consumers, designer steroids can cause serious medical consequences, 
including liver injury and

[[Page S892]]

increased risk of heart attack and stroke. They may also lead to 
psychological effects such as aggression, hostility, and addiction.
  These designer products can be even more dangerous than traditional 
steroids because they are often untested, produced from overseas raw 
materials, and manufactured without quality controls. As one witness 
testified at a Crime Subcommittee hearing on the issue, ``all it takes 
to cash in on the storefront steroid craze is a credit card to import 
raw products from China or India where most of the raw ingredients come 
from, the ability to pour powders into a bottle or pill and a printer 
to create shiny, glossy labels.''
  The unscrupulous actors responsible for manufacturing and selling 
these products often market them with misleading and inaccurate labels. 
That can cause consumers who are looking for a healthy supplement--not 
just elite athletes, but also high school students, law enforcement 
personnel, and mainstream Americans--to be deceived into taking these 
dangerous products. While the world's top athletes competing in the 
Winter Olympics are subjected to strict guidelines and rigorous testing 
to prevent the use of steroids, as they should be, many Americans may 
be unknowingly dosing themselves with these harmful substances.
  Loopholes in existing law allow these dangerous designer steroids to 
evade regulation. Under current law, in order to classify new 
substances as steroids, the DEA must complete a burdensome and time-
consuming series of chemical and pharmacological testing. As a DEA 
official testified before Congress: ``in the time that it takes DEA to 
administratively schedule an anabolic steroid used in a dietary 
supplement product, several new products can enter the market to take 
the place of those products.''
  The Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014 would quickly 
protect consumers from these dangerous products. First, it would 
immediately place 27 known designer anabolic steroids on the list of 
controlled substances. Second, it would grant the DEA authority to 
temporarily schedule new designer steroids on the controlled substances 
list, so that if bad actors develop new variations, these products can 
be removed from the market. Third, it would create new penalties for 
importing, manufacturing, or distributing anabolic steroids under false 
labels.
  Senator Hatch and I worked closely with a range of consumer and 
industry organizations to ensure that this legislation would not 
interfere with consumers' access to legitimate dietary supplements. I 
thank these organizations for their support, and look forward to 
working with them, with Senator Hatch, and with colleagues from both 
sides of the aisle to enact this common sense measure into law.
                                 ______