By Jack McCallum

Schwarzenegger's annual festival features cartoonish hulks and a supplement expo. Michael J. LeBrecht II/1Deuce3 Photography

Steroids In America   Part I: The Present Jack McCallum: The Real Dope David Epstein: The ABC's of HGH Jack McCallum: Youth Movement Part II: The Past Wertheim/Epstein: The Godfather Timeline: A history of steroids in sports Part III: The Future David Epstein: Gene-Doping Jocks Caitlin Moscatello: Stem cells | VIDEO Additional Coverage Survey: Teens' attitudes | Have your say Drug-testing policies, from H.S. to pros React: Your take on the PED obsession

That, of course, doesn't mean large numbers of kids aren't using them, though it's difficult to determine how many. In the SI poll, 0.3% admitted taking steroids, and 0.3% said they took HGH. But Dr. Charles Yesalis, a retired Penn State professor and a recognized authority on steroids, estimates that "at least half a million and probably closer to three quarters of a million children in this country have used these drugs in their lifetime." Adds Yesalis, "The teens I've talked to say [steroids and HGH] are as easy to get as marijuana." The Mayo Clinic has published information that one tenth of U.S. steroid users are teenagers, which by its estimate would put the figure at 300,000.

A major concern about kids and PEDs is the manner in which the youngsters procure the drugs. "Because steroids and growth hormone have been pushed underground," says Romano, "kids are buying them off the Internet. Or from their older brother, or the guy at the gym. And the stuff they're getting is the imported junk from Mexico, the rejected veterinary crap. If they were using the best of the best stuff, that would be bad enough, but it's worse because they're using the bad stuff." Harrison G. Pope Jr., a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, an avid weightlifter and a coauthor of The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession, doesn't believe that steroid use among teenagers is epidemic. But he agrees that the street purchase of PEDs is a major problem, ascribing it to what he calls "the most secret culture of any drug."

Indeed, steroids evolved through clandestine experimentation in dark gyms by men who, even as they displayed their freakish musculature, rarely talked publicly about how they got that way. Zito still kicks himself for having lied on the Howard Stern Show several years ago when asked if he was juicing. "I never lie to my friends," he says, "but I lied that day. When you were asked about steroids back then, you lied."

Predictably, when athletes in mainstream sports discovered PEDs, they too kept the secrets within the confines of the locker room, if not to themselves. Workout buddies sometimes exchanged stories -- what did Roger tell Andy? -- but often it didn't go any further than that. Steroid use was strictly "Don't ask, don't tell", even when averaged-sized players began to mysteriously inflate. Athletes had a lot more to lose than Zito, and their secrets got out only when publicity hounds like Jose Canseco started singing or subpoenas started flying. Even within the bodybuilding industry, outspoken PED proponents like Romano are rare. He says that the physician who prescribes his testosterone and growth hormone has made him swear that he will never utter his name in an interview, even though the prescriptions are dispensed lawfully.?

With secrecy comes hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy surrounding PEDs is mind-boggling. Take the rappers, for whom admitting acts of lawlessness, such as PED use, would seem to be part of the drill. But Timbaland trumpets the bodybuilding and weightlifting regimen that turned him from a 300-pound blubber factory into a buff bodybuilder. The most intriguing part of 50 Cent's story is his transformation from 12-year-old Queens drug dealer Curtis James Jackson III to a 32-year-old workout freak. He even has his own flavor of Vitamin Water, and last year Coca-Cola bought the company that manufactures his drink for $4.1 billion. How would all that jibe with performance-enhancing drugs? "You don't want to be a faker," says the industry source. "That's the game."

Or take California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who despite having used steroids to help him become a seven-time winner of the Mr. Olympia title, bodybuilding's top prize, was named by George H.W. Bush in 1990 to head the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. By all accounts Schwarzenegger (who says he stopped using steroids well before it became illegal to sell or possess them without a prescription, in '90) worked tirelessly and brought unprecedented attention to the council, decrying steroid use all the while. But there was the overmuscled Ah-nold model for all to see. The governor continues to say that PEDs have no place in sport, yet tacitly endorses their use with his annual Arnold Sports Festival, a carnival of muscle porn in Columbus, Ohio, that includes bodybuilding contests and an expo featuring supplements pushed by cartoonishly sculpted hulks. "Even though performance-enhancing drugs have been part of his life," said one exhibitor at last week's festival who requested anonymity, "what can Arnold do? He has to say he's against them."

To a large degree, that describes the position of many Americans, certainly those in Congress and within the sports establishment: They have to say that they're against performance enhancers; they have to bang the gavel and declare, as Delaware senator Joe Biden did in 2004 during a hearing on drugs in sports, "There is something simply un-American about [using PEDs]!"

But it's not un-American. It's entirely American, that search for an edge, that effort to be all you can be, that willingness to push the envelope. That's what Andy Pettitte was doing when he took HGH. That's what Debbie Clemens was doing when she took HGH. That's what male collegiate cheerleaders are doing when they bulk up on anabolic steroids so they can lift more weight, or more female cheerleaders, according to author Kate Torgovnick in her new book, Cheer! That's what a rapper is doing when he receives a package of PEDs at his hotel. That's what Schwarzenegger was doing when he loaded himself with steroids years ago. That's what Kevin and Peggy Hart are doing in the privacy of their bedroom with their HGH and their "test," now as familiar a morning ritual as tea and toast.

We are entering a brave new world. A serious academic and research war rages between those who say that HGH and testosterone are natural substances that need to be replenished when the body's supply runs low and those who proclaim such a philosophy as quackery. "There are very basic questions we're trying to get answers to," says Gary Gaffney, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa's College of Medicine. He is against doctors prescribing HGH and testosterone for antiaging reasons, and even dislikes the term. "Is aging a disease? Should it be treated?" Gaffney believes there hasn't been nearly enough testing on the potential long-term effects of HGH and testosterone-replacement therapies. And his message is being heard. "If you could prove to me that HGH is not harmful," says Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, "I'd be the first in line to get some. But I don't know that."

Dr. Gordon, who in a book promoted the phrase "interventional endocrinology," largely because he recognizes that antiaging raises so many eyebrows, comes from the opposite perspective. "Isn't my dispensing medication to lower blood pressure an antiaging [effort]?" Gordon says. "Otherwise, you'll die, and I call that true antiaging. It's the same thing with testosterone and HGH."

Crucial medical questions are being debated by serious medical people, yet we seem determined to hear them only in the limited context of Roger Clemens's injected buttocks. Pro sports shouldn't stand apart from discussions about performance-enhancing drugs, but they shouldn't frame them either. Who is George Mitchell, a former politician who conducted baseball's steroid investigation, to be asking for legislation to make HGH a controlled substance on par with anabolic steroids, as he did recently? Has he been spending secret time in a research lab all these years? We need to realize that someday, perhaps not far down the road, the names of Clemens, Bonds, Mitchell and Rep. Henry Waxman will be mere footnotes in a story that goes far beyond baseball clubhouses and congressional hearing rooms.