The rise in the non-medical use of anabolic steroids has constituted nothing less than agrowth industry for sport, the media and sectors of the drugs field itself. Academic j ournals ofevery stripe have rehearsed the whole range of issues from the morality of performance enhancement and the ethics of drug testing to the debate over whether or not steroids 'work' and the reality of'roid rage'.
Most media attention focuses on steroid use at international level.
Conscious, too, of a chance possibly to win at least one skirmish in what appears an otherwise hopeless war against drugs, governments have weighed in with laws prohibiting non-medicat use of steroids and support for the banning of those caught out by testing procedures. However, it is clear that in recent years steroid use has broken out not only from the world of 61ite sport, but also from top flight competitive bodybuilding where steroids have long been the unspoken, but nevertheless essential ingredient of success. Psychia, trist Dr Douglas Williamson is quoted as saying he believes, on the basis Of American high school studentstudies, thatsteroidsare one of the most popular recreational drugs of recent times. Obviously by no means all body-builders and those who do fitness training are steroid users, but most workouts take place in the thousands of gymnasia across the country where steroids are potentially most easily obtained. This has been demonstrated by the surveys of steroid users conducted in Britain.