Rogue scientists are always one step ahead of drug testers and the law. Substances being banned are not a problem for them—they simply make new ones that are harder to detect or are modified in a way so that the substance could not be technically considered as an illegal substance, yet. Thus, there are over-the-counter “legal “ drugs that may actually contain steroids or steroid-like substances. These supplements are being taken unwittingly by people, including high school students, thinking that what they are putting inside their body is safe since the product is sold over-the-counter and therefore approved by the FDA for consumption.

It has happened before. Various over-the-counter supplements have been pulled out of the shelves of reputable health stores because these particular products were known to have caused a positive result in more than one steroid testing. It seems that the FDA allows these products to get in the hands of consumers without fully analyzing their contents. Instead of a preventive measure, they are taking a trial-and-error approach to new supplements. No wonder, a lot of designer drugs are being marketed as “dietary supplements” and unleashed to an unsuspecting public.

A new dubious supplement called Tren, dubbed as the “legal steroid,” is out in the market and can be bought without a prescription; it is being gobbled up by an alarmingly significant number of high school athletes as one CBS reporter discovered.

In the small and quiet Southern town Appaloosa in Louisiana where a steroid bust made national headlines last summer, a CBS reporter made an investigation on the use of illegal steroids among high school kids. As the investigation unfolded, CBS correspondent Kelly Cobiella discovered that not only were a number of students using illegal steroids but more of these students were also taking a supposedly legal steroid called Tren.

According to the survey done by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in 2007, around 580,000 high school students used or tried steroids at one point or another. Many of these students were athletes. Cobiella reported that many of the high school athletes who used steroids as a performance enhancer or for building muscles knew that what they were doing was illegal, but more surprisingly, many more were not aware that what they were doing was illegal. These unwitting athletes are ingesting substances which they think are perfectly legal supplements. One expert interviewed by Cobiella, however, said that the pills are really steroids that were unscrupulously masqueraded as supplements.

The expert added that he wanted parents to be aware that the pills that their children may be ingesting contain highly dangerous anabolic drugs. These pills are supposed to make a person big and strong but underneath that, they could cause all kinds of unwanted and ugly side-effects and a host of other problems. In a study conducted by the University of Michigan, the abuse of anabolic drugs among teens has been associated with hormonal problems, stunted growth, strokes, and heart ailments.

In the fine print on the label in such “supplements” are words buried that may pertain to the actual contents of the product, and may be a tip off for purchasers, Cobiella pointed out.

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