Looking for an edge [ArticleImageHyperLink] Wednesday, December 03, 2008 By Conor Bell Advertising    Granite Bay High School athletes operate under a great deal of pressure. Roster spots, valuable playing time and college scholarships are at stake for student athletes, and as a result they search for any advantage they can find.    The tale of performance-enhancing substances is well-documented. Professional sports like baseball, track and field and cycling have all had to suffer through the trials and tribulations of tainted champions, while ominous dealers like the Bay Area’s BALCO have supplied the substances from the shadows.    The case of high school athletes at GBHS isn’t nearly as extreme as that of professional or collegiate sports, but a certain dietary supplement has grown in popularity among students looking to bulk up, a supplement known as Tren.    Tren can be purchased at local vitamin and dietary supplement retailer West Coast Nutrition, which is located in Granite Bay near Cavitt Middle School.      The side effects of Tren would be comical if they were not so disturbing. Aside from unnatural weight gain, there are also a few unpleasant possible outcomes.    “I heard it does weird things to your (nipples) and makes you emotional,” said junior varsity football player Dominic Lucia, who has considered using Tren.    Tren causes the body to produce more estrogen, which ultimately leads to lactation of the nipples and a more volatile emotional state because of hormonal imbalances. An employee at West Coast nutrition strongly encouraged users to buy an “estrogen blocker” along with the Tren in order to prevent this unwanted side effect.    Tren can also allegedly cause liver damage, although there has yet to be any conclusive scientific evidence to prove such a claim. Still, the West Coast Nutrition employee also encouraged Tren users to buy a drug to protect the user’s liver.    The substance for sale at West Coast Nutrition, “Tren 2 Extreme,” is not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Agency. It also has a notice on the bottle forbidding its retail sale to minors, but the supplement is legal for anyone over 18. So although the legality of actually using Tren may be questionable for most minors, assistant principal Brian McNulty made clear the school’s policy on the supplement.   “The way I see it the 18-year-old rule doesn’t apply here,” McNulty said. “It’s a controlled substance (that students can’t have on campus).”    McNulty also said that should a student be found to possess Tren on campus, he would consider it like any other banned substance and an offender would be subject to a one-week suspension.    “It’s one of those level-three infractions,” McNulty said, citing the student handbook. “Possession or use of alcohol or any other controlled or illegal substance on the way to school, at school, after school or at a school-sponsored event.”    Even more serious, though, would be the consequences for students 18 and over who purchase the Tren legally but intend to provide it to their friends.    “Unlawfully selling a controlled substance,” is a level-four infraction in the academic handbook. Any student who attempts a resale of Tren, even if they themselves are over 18, would be guilty of this infraction, for which the suggested consequence is “suspension and mandatory expulsion recommendation,” according to the GBHS academic handbook.      The competitive advantages that come with the use of Tren are undeniable; the store clerk at West Coast Nutrition claimed the supplement allowed users to gain up to 10  pounds a week. GBHS student athletes see the supplement as a shortcut to success.       “The goal is to get bigger and stronger faster,” Lucia said.    In a sales pitch to two GBHS students, the store clerk at West Coast Nutrition claimed that it was what the other athletes at GBHS were using. Lucia agreed that some of his teammates used Tren.    Although students on campus seem to understand many of the effects of Tren, they were less informed on the ease with which it could be attained. Lucia, for example, thought that he would have to go through some friends to get Tren should he ever want to use it.    At West Coast Nutrition, though, the process for buying Tren is much simpler than Lucia had anticipated. All it takes for an underage student to buy supplements like Tren is cash and a willingness to go home without a receipt.    “We help you and you help us,” a West Coast Nutrition employee said of the under-the-table business relationship between the store and its younger customers.    West Coast Nutrition’s system of selling dietary supplements to students under 18 has been extremely profitable. The store not only gets the opportunity to be one of the sole providers of a powerful supplement to eager high school athletes, it also can avoid paying any sort of sales tax on the products it sells to minors.    In fact the demand for Tren, by both legal and illegal customers, has been so great that the West Coast Nutrition employee said the store’s owner had taken a second mortgage on his house in order to stock up on the product.     There is no current testing policy at GBHS for performance-enhancing supplements, and until one is instituted, there will be no way of knowing how many athletes use illegal dietary supplements like Tren. But it appears that as long as there is an advantage to be gained by using a supplement, there will be a market for that substance.

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