After MLB drug report, lawmakers target HGH

by Matthew Hay Brown

Days after former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell detailed evidence of what he said was pervasive abuse of performance-enhacing substances in Major League Baseball, two lawmakers today pushed for congressional action against human growth hormone.

More than half of the players cited last week in the Mitchell Report were accused of using HGH, which can develop muscle mass and speed recovery from injuries. Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said today that the difficult-to-detect substance is both dangerous and underregulated.

“Neither Senator Grassley nor I are here today to discuss the merits of assigning asterisks to players’ records,” Schumer told reporters. “But there is an asterisk attached to the current law covering human growth hormone – namely, that the law is so weak to be ineffective.”

At present, Schumer said, it is not illegal to possess HGH without a prescription or to sell prescriptions for it.

“And even though the improper distribution is technically illegal, it is very tough to enforce,” he said.

Legislation that Schumer and Grassley introduced earlier this year would make HGH to a Schedule III Controlled Substances, available only by prescription.

The designation would make it a criminal offense to improperly manufacture HGH, to improperly possess it with intent to manufacture or to improperly dispense it, with penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment and fines for a first offense, 10 years for a second offense.

Distributing near a school or campus could lead to additional penalties. Simple possession without a prescription would become a criminal offense, with penalties of up to three years of prison. The designation also would require manufacturers, distributors and dispensers to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Senators also want to confer Schedule III status on dehydroeepiandrosterone, a precursor steroid hormone that Grassley said is marketed online to children.

At the other end of the Capitol, a pair of House committees have scheduled hearings next month to follow the Mitchell Report.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has called baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, players' union chief Donald Fehr and Mitchell to testify on Jan. 15. The subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection will invite Mitchell and others back on Jan. 23.

During his press conference today with Schumer, Grassley unveiled an enlarged photograph of a shiny, pumped-up young fellow, who, he said, was a former junior national bodybuilding champion.

“Many of us know kids this age,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t look normal to me.”

The subject put Grassely in mind of his own youthful experience with training, as a teenaged customer of bodybuilder Charles Atlas, of the ubiquitous comic-book ads.

“I was a 97-lb. wealking like he was,” he said. But after six months of exercise, Grassley said, he gave it up – “a 98-lb. weakling.”