Senate seeks tighter supplement regulation from USADA
BY Teri Thompson and Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
At a Senate hearing Tuesday addressing the alarming proliferation of
steroids within the relatively unregulated nutritional supplements
industry, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said his organization
was weeks away from announcing a new initiative that will propose
regulatory reform of the supplements industry and will have the support
of major professional sports leagues.
"It's an effort to educate and effect change in the legislation, " said USADA's chief executive Travis Tygart, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime and drugs. "The problem has migrated away from elite athletes."
Tygart said the initiative will have support from the NFL, NBA, MLB, as well as the U.S. Olympic Committee and other organizations. Various sports leagues recently have faced
challenges to their anti-doping policies by athletes claiming
contaminated supplements had triggered their positive drug tests.
"We may need to look at what we're going to do here with the exemption," said Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.),
referring to legislation that has allowed the dietary supplement
industry to circumvent many of the regulations imposed by the Food and Drug Administration.
Political pressure seems to be building on the supplement industry.
The hearing followed a summer-long series of federal raids on
manufacturers and distributors of steroid-laced supplements. Some of
those enforcement actions were led by federal agents who investigated
the BALCO doping conspiracy.
Specter said he was inspired to hold the
hearings after reading about the 50-game ban on reliever J.C.Romero of
Specter's hometown Phillies.
He said he was also troubled by a federal appeals court ruling from
earlier this month that prohibited the NFL from suspending two Vikings for violating the league's anti-doping policies. Romero and the Vikings players - Kevin Williams and Pat Williams - blamed contaminated supplements for their positive drug tests.
Among other witnesses were top officials from the DEA and FDA, and Jareem Gunter,
a former collegiate baseball player who suffered liver failure after
ingesting an over-the-counter supplement laced with the designer
steroid methasterone.
While he wasn't an official witness at the hearing, Gunter was
called forward to tell the story of his hospitalization. He said he had
gone out of his way to seek a muscle-building supplement that didn't
contain banned substances, but later found out that the makers of the
product had spiked it with an obscure designer steroid.
"I thought I'd found the diamond in the rough, something that
wouldn't hurt me at all," said Gunter, who now works for a non-profit
group.
Besides Specter, the only other lawmaker present for the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime and drugs was Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), one of the most ardent defenders of the supplement industry in U.S. Congress.
"The FDA is overburdened, " Sen. Hatch said, referring to the Food
and Drug Administration, which has struggled to keep up with the
burgeoning industry of bodybuilding supplements. "I blame Congress for
a lot of these things. We don't give you enough support."
Tygart said he still hoped the professional sports leagues would
sign on to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees independent drug
testing for American Olympic athletes. Although the professional
leagues have teamed up with USADA to help fund research for human
growth hormone urine screening, they have largely shunned USADA's
anti-doping policies, which are much stricter than anything pro
athletes face.
"We're not asking for the same approval process as drugs," Tygart
said. "The FDA now gets no idea of what products are out there and what
substances are in them."
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