As the performance-enhancing drug issues continue to accumulate in sports, baseball in particular, we again learn that baseball imitates life or vice versa, and why not, it’s all just people.

New York City and Jersey City are investigating their police departments after a raid on a pharmacy in New Jersey. That pharmacy was apparently a supplier of steroids and human growth hormone to lots of folks, and on their list were members of those two police departments.

Stories are everywhere claiming that HGH is the answer to stopping, or at least slowing, the aging process.

The number of youngsters using steroids or HGH increases as the dollars are thrown at athletes, and every kid, or worse yet, every parent, wants a piece of the action.

Vanity and money – now there’s a stimulant for the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Baseball may have done the country a favor. It is time to take this issue seriously on a national level that extends far beyond sports.

MayoClinic.com seems like a good place to learn a little. This is the Web site of the world renowned Mayo medical clinic.

The site notes that anabolic steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone. They are used by athletes and lots of others to increase muscle mass and increase endurance for workouts.

The Mayo Clinic says the advertised “natural steroids” are the same as synthetic and both “are dangerous drugs.”

The clinic notes the use of steroids can bring on rage and violent behavior, high cholesterol and can damage the heart and liver.

Unfortunately, the effect of high-dosage uses of anabolic steroids “haven’t been well studied.”

HGH is produced by the pituitary gland. It helps fuel growth for the young. When folks reach their 40s, there is less produced.

HGH, notes the clinic, is “currently approved to treat adults with true growth hormone deficiency – not the expected decline in growth hormone due to aging.”

There are limited studies on the effects of taking HGH to slow the aging process, but the clinic says, “… there’s no evidence to suggest HGH is the Fountain of Youth.”

Use of the drug “can increase muscle mass and reduce the amount of body fat in healthy older adults,” but they note that muscle mass does not equal strength, which is supposedly why athletes take HGH.

Again, there are limited studies on HGH use, but side affects include hardening of the arteries, diabetes and high blood pressure.

There are no studies on the cumulative affect of using HGH, and that is an ominous warning for all the teens taking the drug.

Performance-enhancing drugs are yet more products in the long line of magic bullets we seem to love for everything from losing weight to being forever young. Snake oil and magic weight loss pills might not hurt or help, but this stuff could kill you.

That’s why those who are willing to just want the whole matter to blow over in sports need to realize the issues are much more important than home runs and strikeouts.

bdnsports@bangordailynews.net