The legal authority on PEDs, Rick Collins Esq., explains how steroids fell into America’s war on drugs.
Rick Collins is a lawyer and self proclaimed main legal authority on PEDs. This is due to the fact that he bridges the gap between the law and bodybuilding. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a bodybuilder. After building his way up through the field, his entire career is now focused on being a defense lawyer in the steroids and PED space. In our latest GI Exclusive interview, Rick Collins, Esq. explains the legal reality of being a steroid using bodybuilder in the United States. Can an enhanced bodybuilder be arrested for even the smallest possession? Or is it only distributors? Read on to get the full details.
It’s common knowledge that steroids and many other performance enhancing drugs are illegal for recreational use. This means that only under a doctor’s prescription can someone use steroids. They should only be prescribed for strict medical reasons. Sports such as bodybuilding are not a legal reason to be prescribed steroids.
But it wasn’t always this way. Steroids became illegal for recreational use in 1991. Before that, it was something that was up to the sporting leagues. Due to some high profile cases of major athletes getting caught using PEDs, congress acted fast and added steroids as a class 3 narcotic. This places it somewhere similar to pain killers.
Rick Collins explains in detail just how this major decision changed the entire perception of steroids. By being labeled an illegal narcotic during the “war on drugs” era of the country, it became villainized on the same level of pain killers and even drugs like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana.
The perception never shot back – and now most of the mainstream see steroids as an extremely dangerous drug. That’s not to say that PEDs aren’t a powerful substance – but it led to a very black and white mentality on the moral use of it.
So just how dangerous is it legally for enhanced bodybuilders to be using steroids? While the big legal cases focus on supplement companies that use banned substances or underground lab distributors, it is legally possible for an individual to get arrested even for the slightest amount of steroids.
This all varies state to state. While there is a federal law in place, some states are even more strict than the federal law. While a bodybuilder won’t be arrested if they fail a steroid drug test – they can be arrested for possession of the drug illegally.
So how likely is it for this to happen. Rick Collins admits that it’s less common today for an individual to get arrested for having PEDs in their home. Most arrests and legal cases focuses on the exchange. So it’s in the act of buying steroids illegally from a seller that can get you into trouble if caught. Rick Collins also explains that domestic packages can only be searched with a warrant – but international packages can be searched without one. So any enhanced bodybuilders obtaining PEDs internationally take a higher risk of getting caught.
Of course, this isn’t legal advice on how to get away with using steroids. It’s meant to be educational information about the legal realities of steroids and PEDs. In black and white terms, if a bodybuilder is in possession of illegally obtained steroids, yes they can be arrested. While rare, Rick Collins has been to cases where a disgruntled spouse calls the cops, tells them about steroids in their home, and suddenly the DEA do a search and arrest the user.
The debate about PED use in bodybuilding often revolves more around the leagues and whether or not they should aggressively test. But the reality is that anyone using PEDs for recreational use is vulnerable to legal action in the United States.
You can watch Rick Collins, Esq. explain in full detail in our latest GI Exclusive interview segment above.
