Note: This article is about the legal history of Anabolic Steroids in the United States and not an endorsement or discussion about steroids and performance.

There is perhaps no other topic in sports that garners as emotional a reaction than the use of steroids or performance enhancing drugs by professional athletes. For some the ends justify the means, whilst for others, the use of any ergogenic (something that aids performance) goes against fair play.

I suspect that much of this debate is fuelled by the fact that anabolic steroids are an illegal substance in the United States, which is oftentimes the mecca of sports. With that in mind, today’s post looks at the history of steroids in the United States, specifically their first uses and when they became a banned substance.

Steroids: An American Love Story

The ‘discovery’ of steroids can be traced to Germany in 1931, when chemist Adolf Butenandt found a way to isolate and purify the hormone androsterone. This groundbreaking discovery was soon improved by fellow German chemist Leopold Ruzicka, who found a means of synthesising the hormone for human use. By 1935 Ruzicka and Butenandt were creating batches of synthetic testosterone, a scientific advancement that saw both men awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. That’s right. The inventors of steroids got a Nobel Prize back in the day…

By the late 1930s, the first injections of testosterone were being administered to humans for a whole range of purposes and despite the war to come, the invention of steroids brought with it the idea that man could be altered through chemical means. In the US, this was seen informally with the birth of Captain America in 1941, who went from puny to brawny thanks to a secret serum from Dr. Josef Reinstein. Thereby making Captain America the first known juicer in the US.

Makes you view the movie differently now right?

Comic book heroes aside, by the 1940s the Soviet Union were administrating anabolic steroids to large numbers of its athletes, something which explained their dominance in post-war sporting events. It didn’t take long for America to cotton on to the Soviets ways of doing things. By the mid-1950s Dr. John Ziegler, the U.S. Olympic team physician found a way to soon develop methandrostenolone, which is better known in bodybuilding circles as Dianabol. Ciba Pharmaceuticals was first to market the drug and by 1958 Dianabol was approved by the FDA for human use.

Interestingly the first known users of Dianabol were Bob Hoffman and three well known lifters, John Grimek, Jim Park and Yaz Kuzahara. This was a reflection of Ziegler’s close relationship with Hoffman and York Barbell at the time. Interestingly, Grimek was a well known weightlifter and one of bodybuilding’s first stars, making his use of Dianabol a foreshadowing of what was to come for the bodybuilding.

John Grimek

Importantly, all four men reported greater muscle mass and strength gains, which encouraged Ziegler to administer Dianabol to the entire U.S. Olympic weightlifting team in Rome in 1960 yet despite their new enhanced chemicals, the US still lost to the Soviets. More seriously the 1960 Olympics also saw the first reported death due to doping when Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen died during competition. Stemming from Knud’s death, the media began to take more notice of steroids in sport. That same year Sports Illustrated published ‘Our Drug Happy Athletes’, an expose on the use of amphetamines, tranquilizers, cocaine amongst elite athletes. Regardless it took nearly seven years before the International Olympic Committee established a medical commission to fight doping and it wasn’t until 1968 that compulsory drug tests were brought into the Olympics proper. During that time period steroids had become an accepted means of performance enhancement in several American pastimes such as baseball and American Football.

The IOC testing methods introduced in 1968, which remember were the first of their kind, were particularly weak. Almost no one tested positive for performance enhancing drugs at either the 1968 Winter Olympic Games in France, or the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico. In fact, the first Olympic athlete disqualified for doping was not a steroid user at all but rather Swede Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a member of the pentathlon team who was stripped of his bronze medal in Mexico when he tested positive for excessive alcohol in his system. Remarkably at the same competition, 14 other athletes tested positive for tranquilizers which were not banned at the time.

Steroids and the Seventies

If the past half century had seen steroids used in abundance by athletes, the following decades would see organisers attempt to expose such athletes. In 1972 the IOC instigated large scale drug testing for all narcotics, resulting in the disqualification of seven athletes. Three years later Anabolic steroids were added to the IOC’s list of banned substances, marking a sea change in public opinion on the drugs. Steroids were becoming the boogey man of sporting endeavours.

Not that athletes stopped using steroids. Far from it. In July 1981 U.S. discus thrower Ben Plucknett tested positive for anabolic steroids, losing his world record title and becoming the first athlete to be disqualified by the International Association of Athletic Federations for steroid use. Despite Plucknett’s punishment, American athletes did not stop taking the drugs. In 1983 the Pan Am Games in Venezuela descended into chaos when a surprise drug test resulted in the withdrawal of dozens of athletes. Including a dozen American athletes who withdrew from the competition and returned to the U.S. without explanation. Something was up and it wouldn’t be long before a real scandal hit North America.