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Steroid ring found in Italy; some said to go to US troops
By Associated Press | August 2, 2005
ROME -- Police have seized 215,000 doses of prohibited substances while dismantling a ring that supplied steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to customers around the world, including US soldiers in Iraq, a police official said yesterday.
The US military in Iraq had no immediate comment, but the popularity of steroid abuse has long been discussed as US troops and contractors in Iraq work out in gyms set up in bases and even in the mirrored halls of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.
Joe Donahue, program director for the Vietnam Vets of America Foundation -- who spent 16 months in Iraq, often lifting weights in the Green Zone gyms -- said steroids were on offer for those who wanted them.
''I had them offered to me by an Iraqi guy who sure as hell looked like he was using them," Donahue said. ''There were guys I'm pretty sure were juicing."
Donahue said two Iraqi bodybuilders sold steroids and other supplements in the Green Zone building where he worked. ''I can say with no equivocation, I was offered steroids," Donahue said in an interview.
Private security contractors said that steroid use also is a problem among their employees, because the drugs are readily available in Iraq -- as easy as buying a soda from the local stores, according to a contractor.
The police investigation in Italy began after a post office in Trieste, in northeastern Italy, reported that US postal authorities in Iraq returned hundreds of packets of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs because they had been improperly addressed.