Amazon.com: An unfettered marketplace for banned and illegal drugs masquerading as dietary supplements

Banned and illegal drugs, by definition, should be hard to get, shouldn’t they? Unfortunately, the reality is quite the opposite; just explore Amazon.com, one of the largest marketplaces for banned or illegal drugs masquerading as dietary supplements.

Need steroids?  There are plenty of options.  New stimulant compounds that the FDA and other international authorities consider illegal and have proven harmful; no problem those are in stock.  What about new drugs that have yet to be approved for human consumption?  Sure you can get those too.  We explore a few startling examples of the illegal and potentially dangerous compounds available today at Amazon.com.

Steroids have been a concern for consumers and athletes for decades.  Pharmaceutical steroid development reached a pinnacle in the 1960’s with a handful of steroids like stanozolol and nandrolone approved for human use, after being evaluated for safety and toxicity. 

Since then a proliferation of prohormones, designer steroids or steroids in disguise, appeared in the dietary supplement marketplace and in positive drug test results in sport.  Unlike approved steroids, the safety, toxicity and approved dose of such compounds are unknown, and some, particularly 17-alpha-methylated steroids like Superdrol, have proven to be toxic and dangerous.  The drug caused liver failure and a positive drug test for an NCAA athlete Jareem Gunter in 2005.

With the BALCO scandal in 2003, that unearthed the doping escapades of Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and Barry Bonds, came attention.  Steroids like ‘THG’ and ‘Madol’ were at its heart.  President George W. Bush focused on steroids in his 2004 State of the Union Address.  Later that year, Bush signed the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004, which was enhanced with the passing of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2012.

The FDA took prominent action in a highly publicized raid of Bodybuilding.com in November 2009.  In one of the largest regulatory actions to date, the FDA found 65 illegal steroid products for sale that contained five steroid compounds, “Superdrol,” “Madol,” “Tren,” “Androstenedione,” and/or “Turinabol.”  In 2012, as a result of this case, a fine of $7 million dollars was levied against Bodybuilding.com.

Unfortunately, Amazon did not heed the president’s 2004 State-of-the-Union message, nor the legal regulations in the Anabolic Steroid Control Acts, nor the prominent FDA enforcement action against Bodybuilding.com.

Amazingly, in January 2011 we noted in a blog post that products the FDA had raided Bodybuilding.com for in 2009 were still available at Amazon.com, namely CEL M-Drol, which contained ‘Superdrol’ (Superdrol, also known as methasterone, has the scientific name 2α, 17α-dimethyl-5α-androstane-3-one-17β-ol).  The Washington Post reported the story on January 19, 2011, numerous other news outlets followed with their own coverage.  We at The Catlin Consortium had hoped that by publicizing the issue Amazon would be put on notice allowing the company to address the issue responsibly.

That has not happened.  Instead, CEL M-Drol remained available at Amazon.com on September 10, 2013.  It has since mysteriously disappeared from the site after we
included the link in a supplement industry presentation in late September.  ‘Superdrol’, however, continues to appear in another product called M-Stane, which lists the compound on the label under the name 2a-17a-dimethyl-5a-androst-3-one-17b-ol.

M-Stane is only the tip of the iceberg.  As of October 20, Amazon.com still had two products available that were named on the FDA raid list in 2009; Kilo Sports Trenadrol and Purus Labs Nasty Mass.   A search for ‘prohormones’ on Amazon.com returned 125 products on October 20.  Many likely contain steroids or related substances. 

But the concern doesn’t stop with steroids.  Dangerous new stimulants like methlyhexaneamine and methamphetamine analogs, appearing as pre-workout supplements, remain available at Amazon.com.  Of particular concern is the original version of Jack3D from USP Labs and Craze from Driven Sports.

Jack3D grew to be one of the most popular pre-workout supplements on the market over the last several years.  The original version contained the now infamous stimulant methylhexaneamine, otherwise known in the industry as DMAA, geranamine, geranium oil extract and other names.  Patrick Arnold, the BALCO chemist, filed a patent for the compound under the name geranamine and included it in his own pre-workout product.

The drug has become a huge concern for athletes.  Astonishingly, more than 758 positive drug tests for methylhexaneamine have been reported by World-Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) labs since 2008, when the first positive was called.  The drug was not banned in 2008.  It was added to the WADA Prohibited List in 2009.  In 2012 alone there were 320 positive test results representing 7.1% of the 4,500 total WADA findings that year, placing behind only testosterone (T/E, 1,202 findings) and marijuana (398 findings). 

Some manufacturers defended methylhexaneamine, claiming it was geranium oil extract and thus of natural origin and present in the food supply prior to 1994, which would make it legal according to the definition of an ingredient in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.  However, the natural origin of the DMAA used in supplements proved unfounded and the FDA has challenged its legality and safety for several years and considers the synthetic compound to be an illegal ingredient. 

Of primary concern is the potential for the compound to cause serious harm, and even death.  Sadly, Jack3D was implicated in the death of Claire Squires, a runner in the 2012 London marathon.

USP Labs has since reformulated the product and removed DMAA  as have other manufacturers.  Despite the significant attention and health risks, the original version of Jack3D continues to be available at Amazon.com.  The reformulated Advanced Formula Jack3D is also available, marketed differently, suggesting that the distinction between the two products is known.  Neither includes ingredient information on the site.

Craze is one of the second generation pre-workout products that began to proliferate when methylhexaneamine was addressed by authorities.  It was Bodybuilding.com’s New Supplement of the Year in 2012.  The Craze label says it contains Dendrobex™, a trademarked extract of dendrobium, an orchid.  The label suggests that several suspicious compounds are components of Dendrobex™: N,N-Diethyl-B-Phenylethylamine and N,N-Dimethyl-B-Phenylethylamine, a CAS registered compound that is .004 mass units away from methamphetamine.  Eventually, the compound present in Craze was shown to be a methamphetamine analog, N,α-diethylphenylethylamine, with no known natural presence.

USA Today, in its exhaustive reporting on Craze and its manufacturer Driven Sports, elicited a significant response from retailers in the dietary supplement industry.  Giants like Wal-Mart, eBay, and Bodybuilding.com have recently pulled the product, but not Amazon.com. As of October 20, Craze remained available from 8 Amazon sellers.

We conclude with perhaps the most amazing example of all, involving a new category of developing drugs called Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators, or SARMs for short.  SARMs are drugs that act like steroids by activating androgen receptors in the body.  SARMs are a relatively new category of drugs and thus many compounds are still in development and clinical trials where toxicity and safety are being evaluated.  One such drug is Ostarine, being developed for muscle wasting disease associated with cancer by a company called GT-X, under the name Enobosarm, GTx-024 and MK-2866. 

No need to wait for approval, it appears Ostarine is already for sale in dietary supplements at Amazon.com, IronMagLabs OstaRx and Cutting Edge Labs OstaMax are names that suggest the new SARM is an ingredient.  The label for OstaMax, included on Amazon.com, is astounding, stating, “FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY, NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION”, and yet there is a serving suggestion of one capsule daily!  The scientific name of Ostarine is on the label as is the MK-2866 naming convention used by GT-X.  Positive drug tests have already been seen with a female cyclist testing positive for Ostarine in June, and WADA reporting five SARMs as a whole in 2012.

The Amazon mission statement is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”  Steroids, stimulants, drugs not approved for human consumption, and other potentially dangerous drugs, we hope, were not the intended aim of that mission.  Providing a marketplace for illegal compounds masquerading as dietary supplements in the face of international attention, consumer health concerns, and serious adverse events seems contrary to the customer-centric focus.  At the very least it is dangerous and irresponsible.

Global marketplaces like Amazon.com help set preferences across a variety of products, including dietary supplements.  We hope that Amazon becomes a real part of the solution by making the choice to eliminate these dangerous products instead of continuing to perpetuate their distribution.

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Amazon sellers trafficking steroids, some classified as Schedule III Controlled Substances

With the attention paid to anabolic steroids and the threat they pose to sport and public health, it is amazing to discover that such products are for sale today at Amazon.com.  We focus here on Amazon.com and on methasterone and madol, two drugs that appear in two products for sale there, but it is important to realize this marketplace is only the tip of the iceberg.  Although some suggest that we should continue to allow free access to these products, our contention is that products like these that can cause liver failure and other significant harm should not be a mouseclick away from unsuspecting consumers, especially our youth where the harm can be greatly magnified.

The first drug is methasterone, otherwise known as methyldrostanolone, which became known under the name Superdrol in late 2005. Don helped expose it as a new designer steroid in an article by Amy Shipley published by the Washington Post Nov. 2005. Methasterone has been connected to cases of liver failure in several publications.  The chat rooms on the topic provide the user accounts and hammer home the issue; check out this graphic example, if you want.  The FDA issued a warning and took action against marketers of the product in March 2006.  The World Anti-Doping Agency added the compound to the Prohibited List for 2006.

Despite inclusion on the FDA and WADA lists, the DEA does not yet have methasterone on its list of Controlled Substances as of Sept. 15. M-Drol caught the eye of the FDA in late 2009 when the product was included on a list of 65 steroid products that Bodybuilding.com was distributing.  The FDA took action against some of the products and against Bodybuilding.com resulting in voluntary recall of the products from the site.  Nonetheless, methasterone appears to be widely available in the marketplace today in many forms including Competitive Edge Labs M-Drol.

This dangerous non-FDA approved drug can still be purchased from many mainstream retailers including through 7 Amazon Sellers at Amazon.com, as of Jan. 17.  Included in the marketing heading for the product is, “M-Drol-Anabolic Muscle Building Formula, 90ct (Compare To Superdrol).”  We decided to go ahead and do the comparison.

Competitive Edge Labs M-Drol was purchased through Amazon.com on Nov. 15 in an order fulfilled by Amazon Seller Surplus-Supplements.  We analyzed it in our ISO 17025-accredited lab and compared it to a reference standard of methasterone, or Superdrol, and in fact M-Drol does still contain methasterone.  The sale of methasterone or a drug like it would likely qualify as sale of an unapproved new drug, according to the FDA’s recent letter to industry from Dec. 15: “These products are illegal because they are unapproved new drugs under 21 U.S.C. §§ 321(p) and 355(a) and/or adulterated dietary supplements under 21 U.S.C. § 342.”

There is more clarity in the case of the second product, Competitive Edge Labs P-Plex, which contains the anabolic steroid Madol.   Madol is classified as a schedule III controlled substance by the DEA under the name desoxymethyltestosterone (no other names listed).

Madol was the second of two designer steroids discovered during the BALCO doping scandal in 2003. During the federal BALCO investigation, vials of the seized drugs were analyzed and characterized by Don and his team, then at the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory.  The drug that received the most notoriety was THG, short for tetrahydrogestrinone, a modified version of the already prohibited anabolic steroid gestrinone.  Madol was characterized later in 2004 and received much less publicity.  Madol was added to the Controlled Substance list Jan. 4. 2010 after a nearly two year process.

Madol has a proper scientific name of 17α-methyl-5α-androst-2-en-17β-ol.  The compound can be found under the following names; Madol, DMT, desoxymethyltestosterone, 17a-methyl-5a-androst-2-ene-17b-ol, 17a-methyl-etioallocholan-2-ene-17b-ol and other variations.

Despite its involvement in a high-profile case such as the BALCO investigation and inclusion on the controlled substance list, Madol appears in the dietary supplement marketplace in many forms.  It became popular under the name Phera-Plex and continues to be marketed in many products today.  Numerous options can be easily purchased on the Internet, including through Amazon.com.

Today at Amazon.com you will find Competitive Edge Labs P-Plex.  P-Plex was also included in the FDA action against Bodybuilding.com, yet it remains in stock and available through two Amazon Sellers as of Jan. 17. The marketing headline for P-Plex on Amazon.com reads, “P-Plex-Anabolic Muscle Building Formula 10mg, 90ct (Compare To Phera-Plex).”  We purchased the product on Jan. 6 through Amazon.com in an order fulfilled by Amazon Seller MMMPower and have identified Madol in the product.

The FDA considers this a serious matter and in a powerful letter to industry on December 15, 2010 wrote, “Responsible individuals and companies should be aware that the government may initiate criminal investigations to hold accountable those who violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) and endanger the public health. Responsible individuals, even if the individual did not participate in, encourage, or have personal knowledge of the violation, can be criminally prosecuted under the Act, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 331. See United States v. Park, 421 U.S. 658 (1975). When the evidence warrants, felony charges may be appropriate.”

Knowingly or not, Amazon does appear to be providing a marketplace for selling steroids, some classified as controlled substances.  Amazon was willing to withdraw the pedophile’s guide in three weeks, as we pointed out in our blog post Nov. 12.  Hopefully, Amazon will hear the FDA on this matter and also voluntarily withdraw these steroid products from their website, sooner rather than later.  We stand ready to help Amazon or other retailers in maintaining a safe marketplace for dietary supplements in the future.  ##

FDA’s significant action is already reducing the number of steroids at some retailers

The Food and Drug Administration’s letter to industry sent Dec. 15 is one of the most important and commendable actions against the proliferation of anabolic steroids in the United States since the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004, as it comes with the promise of significant enforcement action.  Unfortunately, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act did not stem the widespread availability of steroids it merely ushered in a new era of designer steroids.  By providing a list of those that were “illegal,” it pushed the prohormone manufacturers to find new compounds or name old ones using obscure nomenclature to confuse the authorities.  This recent forceful FDA action has the potential to change the landscape and it is already seeing evidence of its effect, but there is a great deal of work to do.

The letter began as follows: “This letter addresses the significant public health problems posed by products that are marketed as dietary supplements but that contain the same active ingredients as FDA-approved drugs, analogs of the active ingredients in FDA-approved drugs, or other compounds, such as novel synthetic steroids, that do not qualify as dietary ingredients.”

It goes on to commit to serious enforcement. “Manufacturers, ingredient suppliers and distributors should not expect that a warning letter will be issued if FDA discovers potentially harmful violative ingredients in products marketed as dietary supplements. FDA recognizes that active ingredients at meaningful levels do not appear by accident in a product marketed as a dietary supplement – somewhere in the supply chain, the active ingredient is incorporated into the ingredient or the finished product. Actions that pose a risk to public health should expect a swift and strong agency response.”

The threat of significant and immediate action without any warning is what is needed to finally control the flow of these dangerous products.  This action is just in time as the situation was truly getting out of control.  An example using one retailer of such products demonstrates the problem and the effect of the FDA action.

When we first mentioned nutritionarsenal.com on Sept. 15 in our blog post, Despite numerous efforts to the contrary, prohormones remain widely available today, we found 84 products listed as prohormones.  As we noted on Dec. 12 in our blog post, New designer steroids appearing at an alarming rate, 15 new products in two months!, the explosion of such products was astounding as the number of prohormones listed had ballooned to 99!  We visited nutritionarsenal.com again today and were quite pleased to see the evidence of the FDA activity.  Today the number of prohormones offered is at 75 and dropping three weeks after the FDA letter, a clear sign that it is being taken seriously.

As we say, however, much work remains.  One of the most blatant examples comes in Competitive Edge Labs M-Drol product.  Although it was included in the FDA’s action against Bodybuilding.com in late 2009, it has remained for sale at a number of retailers since that time.  At nutritionarsenal.com, a new label has been added on the sales page for M-drol: “This item has been discontinued. All sales are FINAL,” another sign that the FDA letter, and perhaps our posts, have been effective.

FDA warns that tainted products marketed as dietary supplements are potentially dangerous – Anti-Doping Research’s Dietary Supplement Survey – A strategy in response

The Good, the Bad, and the Dirty in the Dietary Supplement Industry – Anti-Doping Research’s (ADR) Dietary Supplement Survey

Despite being widely available today, dietary supplements can contain unsafe and illegal substances that pose significant health risks to consumers.  Novel designer steroids, stimulants like ephedrine, pharmaceutically active ingredients like sibutramine, and other untested or unsafe ingredients continue to slip into the dietary supplement marketplace.  The FDA has responded with a significant and laudable new effort to work with the industry to combat the issue as described in, “FDA: Tainted Products Marketed as Dietary Supplements Potentially Dangerous.”  We would like to assist the effort through ADR’s Dietary Supplement Survey, for which we are currently raising financial support.

In ‘Tainted Body Building Products,” the FDA issued a warning that, “FDA cannot test all products on the market that contain potentially hidden ingredients.  Enforcement actions and consumer advisories for tainted products only cover a small fraction of the tainted over-the-counter products on the market.”  The numbers of tainted products are vast and the problems real.  According to the press release, “In recent years, FDA has alerted consumers to nearly 300 tainted products marketed as dietary supplements and received numerous complaints of injury associated with these products.”  Yet this is just a small fraction.  We would like to use our experience to help test and expose more, one of the primary goals of our Dietary Supplement Survey.

In the words of the FDA Commissioner, Margaret A. Hamburg, “These tainted products can cause serious adverse effects, including strokes, organ failure, and death.”  The dangers, as we know first-hand, are all too real, as we have dealt with numerous cases of acute liver injury in young adults who have used such products.  Colleagues such as Don Hooton have had lives forever changed by the suicide of a son using steroids to pursue athletic advancement.  Unfortunately, the issues are not isolated to body-building products as they span other categories like weight loss and sexual enhancement as well.  If such products are manufactured in the same facilities as legitimate supplements, the potential for contamination is also a concern.

In the FDA Letter to Industry, a fine point is made. “These products not only pose risks to consumers,” it states, “but undermine confidence in legitimately marketed dietary supplements in these and other categories.”  The majority of the dietary supplement industry produces products that do not contain illicit ingredients or contaminants and that should also be showcased.  In the letter, the “FDA is also seeking continued input and collaboration from the trade associations to educate the industry about this problem and to develop strategies to combat it.”

We believe that ADR’s Dietary Supplement Survey initiative could be such a strategy.  To sum up our goals:  We aim to explore which products are good, which products are bad, and which products exhibit contamination with low but potentially harmful levels of illicit ingredients.

More specifically, we will perform focused testing on problem categories to expose dangerous new products.  We will also conduct testing on a variety of randomly selected products to evaluate the prevalence of contamination and to demonstrate that the majority of products are indeed clean.  In the process, we will help audit the current retail environment to assist with enforcement and will characterize new supplement ingredients that have the potential to cause harm or lead to a positive drug test.  The results of our work will available via an interactive website portal complete with testing data, public service announcements and more.

As a public charity, Anti-Doping Research, a leader in performance-enhancing drug and toxicology research and testing, is working to raise $1.5 million to conduct the Dietary Supplement Survey.  We hope to gain broad support from a variety of sources to provide for a collective solution.  We have reached out to our friends in the dietary supplement community, the sporting community, anti-doping, collegiate and high school athletics, sporting sponsors, pharmaceutical companies and others in pursuit of support.  We would also welcome the involvement of the general public through volunteer activity or small contributions.  All donations are tax deductible.

If you have any questions, please contact us at 310-482-6925 or by e-mail at dcatlin@antidopingresearch.org or ocatlin@antidopingresearch.org.

Consumers, athletes and other elite professionals deserve a marketplace offering legitimate and safe dietary supplements.  With your help, we are confident that we can help make this happen.   Please join us and help support this important initiative with your contribution today.