The Scoop

Mike Brunker of MSNBC.com spent three months following the sale of anabolic steroids on eBay, finding that “a few of the auctions occurred in the open but many used the simple ruse of listing the drugs as ‘books about steroids’ to avoid detection by the site’s security team.” An eBay vice president said that such sales haven’t received the proper scrutiny: “Until you brought this to our attention, it wasn’t getting as close a look as it should have.” MSNBC.com worked with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy to purchase four of the products and have them tested. “All four products — injectable solutions in factory packaging, oral tablets labeled in Spanish as being for veterinary use and unmarked pills in a plastic bag — turned out to be just what the sellers claimed they were: anabolic steroids like Dianabol, Sustanon and testosterone propionate.”