BREAKUP OF DRUG RING IS MOMENTARY VICTORY

On Monday a federal prosecutor and a Drug Enforcement Administration
chief each said that international law enforcement actions to cut off
the flow of steroid powder from China to the United States were
"aiming at the head of the dragon."

But that is the wrong metaphor, said Anthony Roberts, a New Jersey man
who has written three books on steroids and bodybuilding and operates
a blog.

"It's not a dragon, it's a hydra," Roberts said in a telephone
interview yesterday. "Once there's a gap in the market, people fill
that gap."

Indeed, federal officials said that one crackdown after another had
shown how difficult it was to break up the sprawling market for
illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

"We're cutting off many heads," Steve Robertson, a special agent and
spokesman for the D.E.A., said yesterday.

"Will new heads grow back? Yeah. That's the nature of the drug
business."

In 2002, the D.E.A. knocked out the biggest supplier of illegal
steroids to the United States to date in Operation TKO against
Laboratorios Ttokkyo, a Mexican factory marketing steroids and
ketamine as veterinary products.

In 2005, Operation Gear Grinder, billed by the D.E.A. as the largest
steroid bust in history, led to the prosecution of eight other Mexican
factories that supplied an estimated 82 percent of illegal steroids in
the United States.

This week the D.E.A. announced a new record for the largest steroid
enforcement action: Operation Raw Deal against the more than 124
people and 56 underground laboratories that had been buying steroid
powder from China, the source of 99 percent of the chemicals entering
the illicit market, according to the D.E.A.

Enforcement officials trumpeted their successes at news conferences in
five cities Monday, aimed at warning the youth of America about the
physical and criminal dangers of steroid use. But they would never say
they had won.

"Drug trafficking organizations and the individuals they supply will
attempt to adapt to the success of Operation Raw Deal," John P.
Gilbride, special agent in charge of the New York office of the
D.E.A., said in an interview Thursday.

"What we will do is to be diligent in terms of identifying any new
trends."

Two investigators who worked on the global steroid cases, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because their investigation was continuing,
described each case as comparable to plugging holes in a dike.

"We figured we would have a big impact if we shut down Mexico," one of
the investigators said. "What we didn't see coming is we created a
much larger and more complex problem for the D.E.A. We didn't hit the
source."

The Chinese steroid powder suppliers and American underground
laboratories became blatant in advertising and selling through
password-protected Web sites, anonymous e-mail services and secretive
financial transactions. Surveillance and federal subpoenas scooped up
all those avenues of information, the investigators said.

In February, officials for the D.E.A. and the Food and Drug
Administration traveled to Beijing to tell their counterparts about
the flood of different steroid powders coming from China. They wanted
to give the Chinese ample time to fix the problem before the 2008
Olympics, the investigators said. Within a week, the Chinese
government posted a new list of chemicals that were illegal to export.

That helped dry up the supply to underground laboratories for a while
and accelerated the evidence gathering against dealers who thought
they could "wait out the storm," the investigators said.

Operation Raw Deal was brought home with an international takedown
date in 27 states and 9 foreign countries.

Federal authorities have given the Chinese government their dossiers
on 37 companies involved in the steroid trade. "Hitting China we hope
will have more impact than anything we have done domestically," one of
the investigators said.

Web sites that advertised steroid powder are still under
investigation. Robertson said the largest distributors would be targeted.

Federal agents are also trying to identify tens of thousands of buyers
through shipping, financial and e-mail records and say they plan to
pursue many of them.

"We haven't even scrubbed the surface yet," one investigator said.
"We're essentially dismantling the industry."