Drugs in the Sports Industry

Ø  Generally Speaking, in the past decade, performance enhancing supplements have grown to a $1.6 billion industry

Ø  In 1994 under a Federal “Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act” that a supplement was considered to be anything and everything from electrolytes in Gatorade to stimulants and hormones that can have serious, dangerous side effects.

Ø  The act states that supplements do NOT need to undergo the thorough and rigorous efficacy and safeties testing like “drugs” do.

Ø  This act would unknowingly allow some unrestricted sale of compounds that are not normally found in the average human diet, so long as they are considered to be from “natural sources”.

For example:

·         Thyroid-stimulating hormones can be sold as a fat burning supplement

·         Body builders can swallow testosterone in hopes of building lean muscle