champcar99
22-11-2007, 11:45 PM
"On Friday November 9th 2007, I spoke with Ralph Meibos, the president of San Rafael Chemical Services in Salt Lake City Utah. San Rafael has been doing lab analysis for the supplement industry for 17 years. Basically, the supplement industry uses them for quality control to make sure that their products meet label claim. They had until last week, a DEA license and a company or an individual could send them a sample of a drug to test to make sure it contained what it was supposed to contain.
So, you could send them your multi-vitamin to see if there was as much Vitamin C in the bottle as the lab le claims. You could send them one of your generic heart pills to make sure it was the same as the brand pill. And you could even send them an anabolic steroid sample and they would tell you if it was what you thought it was.
Well, the DEA did not like this and had a problem with San Rafael performing quality control for steroid manufacturers and underground labs. And so they were raided. As a result, they had to surrender their DEA license, so they can no longer work with controlled substances.
The President, Mr. Meibos, is understandably devastated. As he explained to me, the raid was not a financial blow to his business, because the majority of what he tests are dietary supplements, but, the taking of his customer lists, financial records and essentially lots of the documentation he uses to run his business has be a severe emotional blow.
I asked him why he thought he was raided and he offered up several theories:
One is the "low hanging fruit" theory. According to Mr. Meibos, the DEA has been so ineffective at busting narcotics dealers, that they are going after the steroid dealer and he was swept up in that. He even suggested that he believed that the DEA could have thought that he was running a BALCO style lab instead of a chemical testing facility.
He also speculated that the Raid could have been provoked by an unscrupulous underground lab itself. For example, some of the steroids he tested were what they were supposed to be. Others of the steroids he tested were not what they were supposed to be and some samples even contained completely unrelated and dangerous substances. His lab was shining a light on the really bad underground labs passing off one substance as a specific anabolic steroid when it was not. Mr. Meibos speculates that a lab getting a bad quality grade could have vindictively tipped off the DEA.
In my opinion, San Rafael Chemical Services is an innocent victim that got swept up on Operation Raw Deal - the largest steroid enforcement action in U.S. history."
It's not looking good
So, you could send them your multi-vitamin to see if there was as much Vitamin C in the bottle as the lab le claims. You could send them one of your generic heart pills to make sure it was the same as the brand pill. And you could even send them an anabolic steroid sample and they would tell you if it was what you thought it was.
Well, the DEA did not like this and had a problem with San Rafael performing quality control for steroid manufacturers and underground labs. And so they were raided. As a result, they had to surrender their DEA license, so they can no longer work with controlled substances.
The President, Mr. Meibos, is understandably devastated. As he explained to me, the raid was not a financial blow to his business, because the majority of what he tests are dietary supplements, but, the taking of his customer lists, financial records and essentially lots of the documentation he uses to run his business has be a severe emotional blow.
I asked him why he thought he was raided and he offered up several theories:
One is the "low hanging fruit" theory. According to Mr. Meibos, the DEA has been so ineffective at busting narcotics dealers, that they are going after the steroid dealer and he was swept up in that. He even suggested that he believed that the DEA could have thought that he was running a BALCO style lab instead of a chemical testing facility.
He also speculated that the Raid could have been provoked by an unscrupulous underground lab itself. For example, some of the steroids he tested were what they were supposed to be. Others of the steroids he tested were not what they were supposed to be and some samples even contained completely unrelated and dangerous substances. His lab was shining a light on the really bad underground labs passing off one substance as a specific anabolic steroid when it was not. Mr. Meibos speculates that a lab getting a bad quality grade could have vindictively tipped off the DEA.
In my opinion, San Rafael Chemical Services is an innocent victim that got swept up on Operation Raw Deal - the largest steroid enforcement action in U.S. history."
It's not looking good