AN OLYMPIC FREE-FOR-ALL IN DRUG ABUSE

"These warnings about steroids are bullshit. Eight years I've been on them.
I went from being 70 kilos and super-aggressive to 100 kilos feeling calm
and confident. Look at my eyes," says Jim, agitated and enthusiastic,
muscles bulging from a tight black T-shirt. "No wrinkles. I don't know if
it's the steroids, but the only wrinkles I've got are the frown lines."

Jim is a mid-level player in one of the four major national networks
supplying steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to an expanding
market. Originally it was body-builders; these days, says Jim, the gay
community, young professionals, fitness fanatics and nightclubbers are keen
customers.

Jim's network also supplies Olympic athletes, now ultra-cautious about
testable substances. He is directly aware of sales to five athletes from
weightlifting, athletics and swimming.

"They only want the stuff you can't test for, EPO and HGH (human growth
hormone)," Jim said. "They can detect steroids months afterwards.

"HGH is very difficult to get, very expensive, upwards of $3000 for an
eight-week cycle, two international units a day," he said.

The 1575 vials of HGH stolen from a Sydney warehouse in January would have
gone "straight to the athletes", Jim said. He discounts reports that most of
our Olympic athletes take performance-enhancing drugs, but believes up to
20per cent do.

Jim also deals in more traditional illicit drugs, such as cocaine. Like
other organised criminals, he was attracted to performance-enhancing drugs
because the profits were similar, the risks negligible.

In eight years the "police never bothered us", he said. They were not
looking and even if they did, the worst he faced was a "slap on the wrist".

This year he is more cautious, tighter control on veterinary steroid
factories has reduced his "back door" supply. He also fears legal changes in
some states placing steroid dealing on a par with heroin.

He need not worry.

Despite the imminent Olympics, around the nation not a single police officer
can be found investigating the performance-enhancing drugs industry, tough
laws are absent in most states and the coordination of research,
intelligence and law enforcement is non-existent.

Between our customs officers at the border and our sports stadiums - where
spot urine checks can detect some illicit drugs - the trade is expanding
virtually unchecked.

The drugs are easily obtainable if you have contacts in the gym or
body-building industry and new technology has dramatically expanded the
market. A quick search on the Internet calls up several sites, based mainly
in the US and Mexico, specialising in steroids and hormones, along with
detailed usage instructions.

Provide credit card details and a selection of your choice will be
immediately dispatched.

Since a 1988 Senate inquiry recommended a crackdown on the emerging
industry, the warning bells have rung. In 1996 customs inspector Craig
Fleming, who headed a specialist steroid unit, was awarded a Churchill
Fellowship to study steroid abuse in the US.

He found an industry turning over more than $1billion a year, run by
organised crime and expanding into the general community, an expansion
accelerated by the Atlanta Olympics.

When he warned that Australia needed a tougher law-enforcement approach, he
was disciplined, his unit disbanded. Mr Fleming is now the Australian
Olympic Committee's anti-doping manager.

The AOC has led the campaign against performance-enhancing drugs,
encouraging the Federal Government to lead the push for an international
crackdown on the trade.

Back home, impressive education and testing programs have been developed,
but other government responses have been non-existent or disappointing,
according to AOC secretary-general Craig McLatchey.

"There is enough evidence now to suggest there is an exponential increase in
the amount of performance-enhancing drugs coming into this community," he
said. "It has to be a problem government attacks; it can't sensibly say this
is no longer a priority.

"We've got clear evidence that these drugs in sport are alive and well, and
while they are alive and well it erodes the whole ethical base of sport.

"There are people out there breaking the law, but the agencies aren't
enforcing the law. Again it comes to priorities: these people out there say
they don't have the resources. Obviously there isn't at the moment,
particularly at the state government level, political will."

Approaches to state governments to introduce laws "with teeth" were falling
on deaf ears, he said.

The criminals behind the trade were well known, Mr McLatchey said. "If you
want to shut them down, you can."

Inquiries by The Age have identified three of the "Mr Bigs" behind the
trade. One has an interest in an inner-Sydney gym and a fearsome reputation
in Kings Cross, where he is a key player in the heroin trade. Another is an
established figure in Sydney's security industry.

The third, a former body-building champion, specialises in distributing
counterfeit steroids across the country from his Melbourne base. Bulk
agricultural steroids are repackaged into authentic-looking vials of human
product.

Drugs are obtained from vets, manufacturers (through bribery or robbery) or
imported - tablets from Asia, steroids from Mexico and the US, and hormones
from Europe. A CONFIDENTIAL report by the National Expert Advisory Committee
on Illicit Drugs, the most senior drugs body advising federal and state
health and police ministers and attorneys-general, says there is evidence of
existing illicit drug networks distributing sports drugs.

"Information from the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence suggests
that there is increasing involvement of organised crime groups in supply of
performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs), particularly in diversion of
legally produced substances through organised robberies," the report says.

Compiled late last year, the report warns that the use of PIEDs is rising,
with drugs easily obtainable on the black market or through the Internet.

"There has been a 25-fold increase in customs interceptions of illegally
imported PIEDs in the past four years," the report states, with large
amounts of steroids also diverted from Australian veterinary products.

The committee expressed concern that the Australian production of steroids
was "greatly in excess of medical and veterinary need".

The report suggests limits on the legal production of these drugs and a code
of conduct for manufacturers and suppliers.

Committee chairman Robert Ali told The Age he now believed the problem was
even more serious than first thought.

"The sense I have is there is a far greater use of these substances in the
community than we previously recognised," Dr Ali said. "Elite athletes are a
small percentage but create a very important role model."

Existing research was inadequate as studies "totally underestimated the size
of use" and the Olympics would only make things worse, he said.

In March, another report from the ABCI, the Australian Illicit Drug Report,
warned that existing laws were inadequate, aside from new customs penalties.
It also said the Olympics would stimulate the trade.

"A uniform legislative approach across states and territories would unite
law enforcement agencies by clarifying responsibilities and imposing
realistic penalties with a deterrent value matching that applying to other
illicit drugs," the ABCI report states.

Australia's foremost drugs researcher, the National Drug and Alcohol
Research Centre's Paul Dillon, agrees that the performance-enhancing drugs
problem is set to worsen across the community.

"We are yet to see the PIEDs epidemic; I think it will happen for sure," Mr
Dillon said. "It happened in America after the Olympic Games and it will
happen here."

Asked how tough on sports drugs the Federal Government was, Attorney-General
Daryl Williams replied: "I don't think you could get much tougher than a
government that brings out a tough-on-drugs-in-sport strategy."

Although he did not agree that sports drug offences should attract the same
penalties as narcotics, Mr Williams pointed to changes to the Customs Act
making importation of commercial quantities punishable by a five-year jail
term.

Drugs getting through customs would be identified by the testing of
athletes, he said.

Mr McLatchey said that Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone got a shock in a
meeting of the AOC and athletes, including Nicole Stevenson, a month ago.

"It came as a bit of surprise to government that the athletes themselves
took a much harder line and wanted people who are their peers and colleagues
treated as criminals," Mr McLatchey said.

Mr Williams said there was "a bit of debate" on whether use and possession
of PIEDs should be a criminal offence, aligned to hard drugs.

"There is a range of views. Western Australia, the Northern Territory and
Victoria have treated it the same as narcotics; other states treat it quite
lightly," Mr Williams said. "The Federal Government is somewhere in the
middle."

His comments appear to contradict the tough-on-drugs policy. Launching the
initiative last year, Sports Minister Jackie Kelly committed the government
to reducing the flow of illicit sports drugs, by tighter controls and
ensuring penalties for trafficking across all states were identical to those
for heroin.

Ms Kelly said the strategy was integral to upholding Olympic ideals at the
Sydney Games.

The NSW police unit charged with protecting the games, the Olympics
intelligence unit, has undertaken a risk assessment, predicting drugs
incidents were likely before and during the Olympics.

Tomorrow it plans to unveil a major initiative on performance-enhancing
drugs. The announcement is shrouded in secrecy, but The Age believes its
secret weapon is a wall poster, picturing various performance-enhancing
drugs.

The unit's director, a softly spoken ex-ASIO spook, Neil Fergus, said it was
combating the risk by education and training of police. When pressed, he
confirmed that: "There are no other current activities being undertaken by
Olympic security agencies relating to the use of PIEDs by athletes."

Neither was the police service involved in any investigations into the use
of PIEDs, he said.

A NSW police spokesman said there was "no central investigatory point for
performance-enhancing drugs". Incidents such as large drug thefts are simply
left to local detectives to pursue, largely unsuccessfully.

At the federal police, a spokesman said: "PIEDs don't really fall within our
area. It's a customs or a state policing matter."

The head of the Victorian drug squad, Chief Inspector John McKoy, a member
of the Expert Advisory Committee on Illicit Drugs, said it was " true to say
there was no law-enforcement activity between our borders and sporting
tracks.

"There is certainly no one in law enforcement to my knowledge targeting
PIEDs in sport," Chief Inspector McKoy said.

As our Olympic athletes, including baseballer Dave Nilsson - who tested
positive for pseudoephedrine - and basketballer Annie La Fleur - who was
sent a package of banned steroids by her husband - continue to be enmeshed
in drugs controversies, coordination of the agencies involved is absent.

Neil Fergus claimed an IOC sub-committee, headed by SOCOG doping control
manager Nicki Vance, was coordinating groups, including customs, sporting
bodies, federal and state police and health departments in the games
lead-up.

Not so, said Ms Vance. "Our focus is more on the delivery of a detection
program," she said. "We are relying on the other bodies to do their
bit."OTHER bodies appear to be doing anything but their bit.

John Alexander, convenor of the Australian Veterinary Association's
therapeutic advisory committee and member of the NSW veterinary
investigatory committee, has given up reporting illicit steroid dealing to
police because it "doesn't do any good".

"Police say it's way down their priority list whenever help has been asked
for. They say it isn't a big issue."

Diversion of veterinary steroids was still occurring, Dr Alexander said,
with profiteering by a "small minority".

Les Jones, the customs service's national manager border control, believes
increased customs awareness has contributed to the "staggering" increases in
seizures, mostly from postal interceptions.

Customs has compiled Olympics risk assessments, but Mr Jones said it was
unlikely teams would include suspected drug users, although customs was
unlikely to know if they did.

"I think the information would have to be publicly available information for
us to have it," Mr Jones said. "We don't have a network with a whole range
of countries who give us information about people who use PIEDs."

Mr Jones also said he was unaware of any cases where state police had come
to customs with information about possible traffickers.

The answer is simple, according to the AOC: tougher laws, more resources and
a national taskforce to tackle the trade.

"The Federal Government needs to act now to create a national taskforce to
detect, prevent and catch criminals who traffic in hard sports drugs," Mr
McLatchey said. "Until that's done, all the legislation in the world will be
useless."

Attorney-General Williams disagrees: "I wouldn't have thought there was a
need for a further body; law enforcement nowadays operates very much on
cooperation between bodies."

But the Federal and State Governments' senior drugs adviser, Dr Ali, also
backs a taskforce. "There is a need for an integrated response that
identifies the size and nature of the problem and targets responses," he
said.

"It's very important, particularly in the lead-up to the Olympics, when we
know from experience there is more likelihood of these drugs being
available. It's only going to make the problem worse."

The debate is of little concern to Jim, who expects business to remain good.
His biggest problem is obtaining high-quality product.

"The demand will always stay high. The only thing that will lessen it is
people getting ill or dying on counterfeit steroids," he said.