A Bonds trial believed to cost $6 million. A sprawling, civil liberties-trampling investigation that began with questionable dumpster-diving by a small potatoes ex-jock turned tax investigator, morphed into a big-name athlete trophy safari, gave an undercover narcotics agent a weightlifting-induced stroke, ran up a reported $50-plus million price tag, and has no end in sight. Almost a decade of increasingly scarce federal legal resources that otherwise could be put toward drug and immigration cases, instead going to prove and re-prove an obvious, numbing point: Why yes, Virginia, elite athletes juice. (Next on Action News at 11: major corporations exploit the same tax loopholes their own lobbyists write!) Oh, to top things off, Conte now has a slobbery, sweet yellow lab named Balco. No joke.

Was it worth it?

At the end of the day, what did we—the cash-strapped, debt-choked citizens footing the bill—really get?

Do we really want to know?

Look, non-medical steroid use is a crime. So is distribution. In conventional drug cases, the latter typically is more serious than the former, both by statute and in practice. Law enforcement flips users to get to small-time dealers, and small-time dealers to get to bigger suppliers. Little fish lead to whales.

BALCO, by contrast, reversed the order. To wit: steroid supplier Angel "Memo" Heredia avoided punishment by testifying as a star witnesses against track coach Trevor Graham, who allegedly received drugs from Heredia and gave them to athletes such as one-time Olympic golden girl Marion Jones.

Jones ultimately was sentenced to six months in prison. Graham was placed under house arrest for one year. Neither individual was punished for actually using or distributing steroids; they were rapped, respectively, for Jones lying about her use and Graham being untruthful about his relationship with Heredia.

As for Heredia? The guy who was, you know, peddling drugs? He got nothing. Bupkus. To put things another way: suppose the DEA and federal prosecutors had the biggest cocaine importer in the state of California dead to rights. And suppose that instead of locking him or her up, they instead cut a deal to build stronger perjury cases against ... Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen.

Does that make sense?

Weighed against the investigative and prosecutorial manpower expended, the punishments meted out in the BALCO saga seem trivial. Conte: four months of house arrest, four months in a minimum-security facility. Former Bonds trainer Greg Anderson: three months in prison. Steroid chemist Patrick Arnold: three months in prison, three months of house arrest. Cyclist Tammy Thomas: six months of house arrest. That's a lot of ankle bracelets (and a preview for what Bonds can expect should not win his upcoming appeal). The list goes on. BALCO executive James Valente and affiliated track coach Remi Korchemny: one year of probation, each. Defense lawyer Troy Ellerman: 16 months in a federal prison for leaking the names of the athletes involved in the investigation, the longest and most severe sentence in the entire case.