Arrest turns attention to steroid dangers: Cache seized in Canton contained expired cow drugs, By: L.E. Campenella
February 22, 2006, The Patriot Ledger
BRAINTREE - Adam DelRosso, who works out four times a week at Gold’s Gym in Braintree, knows that if he wanted to use steroids he could ask friends who use them or buy them on the Internet.
‘‘I know people who use them; I don’t, though; you can tell,’’ said DelRosso, 24, of Halifax, pointing to arms that are not ‘‘ripped,’’ which are often signs of illicit use. ‘‘It’s how you get big quick.’’
Getting a hard body and top performance from steroids is only a mouse click or a whispered name away, as the arrest of a Canton man showed.
Bruce Kneller, 37, was arraigned yesterday in Stoughton District Court on charges of possessing and distributing the illegal drug through a cross-country e-mail system.
A checking account of Kneller’s containing more than $363,000 was frozen by federal authorities along with thousands of pills, labels and syringes.
Boxes of paraphernalia that law enforcement agents said filled Kneller’s condo contained expired, mislabeled and dangerous steroid substitutes like drugs for cows.
Norfolk County District Attorney William R. Keating said the arrest should be a lesson to those who may be using illegal steroids.
‘‘People don’t know what they’re getting,’’ Keating said. ‘‘(Sellers) create an aura of being safe ... but they’re using ingredients that aren’t even meant for human beings.’’
Steroids can be obtained legally only by a doctor’s prescription, but the drugs have permeated nearly every professional sport, notably baseball. In Turin, several Olympic athletes have been disqualified during the last 10 days for testing positive for chemicals that mask steroid use.
Brad Herman, owner of All Sports Health and Fitness in Rockland, said buying illegal steroids is easy, but that the person using them is risking his health for gain that could be got with time.
‘‘Steroids are a sand castle,’’ Herman said. ‘‘They build people up, then there’s a crash.’’
The National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, estimates that hundreds of thousand of adults use illegal steroids, mostly men, but that the number of young women is growing rapidly.
Health effects from steroid abuse include reduced sperm production and shrinking of the testicles, heart attacks, strokes, liver tumors and hepatitis B and C in those injecting it with a syringe.
Lyle Alzado, a defensive lineman with the NFL’s former Los Angeles Raiders, died at 43 from brain cancer caused by excessive steroid use.
‘‘’Roid rage,’’ or unusually aggressive behavior, is also a common side effect.
Herman, a former probation officer whose facility was the state headquarters for drug-free power lifting, said most athletes take steroids because it’s the fastest way to build muscle mass and sharply increase performance.
‘‘It’s a shortcut,’’ Herman said. ‘‘People who don’t use steroids can be as jacked as those who don’t, but it takes a lot longer.’’
