Thread: It took 2 minutes and $19 for Daily News to get A-Rod's drugs in Dominican Republic

Don't know if this belongs in the sports section or the anabolic section.

It took 2 minutes and $19 for Daily News to get A-Rod's drugs in Dominican Republic

BY CHRISTIAN RED IN SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Updated Thursday, February 19th 2009, 4:20 PM




Need steroids? No problem down here in the country where A-Rod spent much of his childhood.

I walked into the Farmacia Carmina, which sits on a nondescript corner of Avenida Independencia and Pasteur in downtown Santo Domingo.

It is one of five pharmacies within a three-block radius where anyone - from regular Joes to millionaire baseball players like Alex Rodriguez - can walk in and buy anabolic steroids. Some are open 24/7.

No prescription? No sweat.

All that was required was my first name.

The transaction took less than two minutes. The pharmacist handed over one 100 mg ampule of testosterone enanthate, a 2.5 ml. syringe and a package of 10 Methandrostenolone pills, the powerful oral anabolic steroid known as Dianabol.

D-Bol, as it is known on the street, was a popular bodybuilding drug in the '70s before being banned in the United States.

The ampules of testosterone were in the same aisle as baby formula and bottled water. The pharmacist put my first name into a computer.

I then walked 20 steps to the cash register, where the cashier searched for the name on her screen. She rung up the total: 674 Dominican pesos, or $19.

Two days ago, Alex Rodriguez claimed that the steroids he'd ingested from 2001 to 2003, which Sports Illustrated identified as Primobolan and testosterone, had come from "over the counter" purchases his cousin made in the Dominican Republic.

He called the steroids "Boli," street slang for Primobolan, one of the drugs Rodriguez reportedly tested positive for in baseball's 2003 survey testing season.

None of the five pharmacies the Daily News visited Wednesday in Santo Domingo carried Primobolan, the steroid A-Rod claimed was so easy to obtain in the D.R.

Still, the alarming ease with which powerful drugs like testosterone enanthate or Dianabol can be bought here demonstrates the seriousness of the drug problem facing Major League Baseball as it tries to eradicate drug use.

It is illegal to buy testosterone in the U.S. without a prescription, and Primobolan is banned in the U.S. But players can easily hop on a plane to Santo Domingo and acquire high-quality drugs without any hurdles.

"Testosterone enanthate is numero uno. It's oil-based. That's the Cadillac Escalade among Chevy Malibus when you're talking about different types of injectable testosterone," Curtis Wenzlaff told the Daily News Wednesday.

In a 2005 Daily News series, two government sources identified Wenzlaff, a convicted steroid dealer, as the person who designed Mark McGwire's steroid arrays, helping turn McGwire into one of the most feared sluggers of the '90s.

"You do one injection every seven to 10 days and do 10 sets of 25 pushups each day, you'll put on 3 or 4 pounds of muscle. That is high-quality stuff."

Wenzlaff and anti-doping expert Dr. Gary Wadler cited Dianabol as a far more dangerous drug.

Although it helps build incredible strength in the weight room, it causes kidney failure and enlarged breasts among its severe side effects.

Only one of the five pharmacies asked me to produce a prescription for testosterone.

When the pharmacist at Farmacia Carmina was asked if there was anyone who could demonstrate how to inject the testosterone, she shook her head.

She was only in the business of selling it. What you did with it was your business.

cred@nydailynews.com

very interesting. im glad someone did this. its funny that he kept mentioning gnc when that had nothing to do with his situation.