The Third Time Is a Charm: News Media, Policy Dynamics, and the Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-152
Author(s):  
Bryan E. Denham

Designer steroids contain chemical structures “derived from, or substantially similar to” anabolic steroids, which became Schedule III controlled substances in the United States in 1990. Chemists create designer steroids by reverse engineering existing drugs, altering their chemical structures, and creating new compounds. Seeking to help curtail problems with steroid-spiked dietary supplements, the Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014 classified 25 designer steroids, many contained in supplements, as controlled substances. Previous versions of the 2014 legislation, introduced in 2010 and 2012, had failed to become law despite consistent news accounts of supplements contaminated with conventional and designer steroids, as well as steroid precursors. Guided conceptually by a streams-of-influence model, the present article examines regulatory processes involving designer steroids and discusses limitations on the capacity of news outlets to build policy agendas.

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1486-1497
Author(s):  
Felipe Gonçalves Brasil ◽  
Bryan D. Jones

Abstract This Thematic Special Issue on Policy Change and Policy Dynamics has as its main objective to present and discuss agenda setting, one of the most important issues for the study of public policies and the policy process. The agenda setting approach proposes an analytical approach on pre-decision processes to understand broader developments in public policy. To achieve that, it places the attention at the center of political action and relies on the fact that it is the change in attention that would cause, consequently, change in public policy. One of the most relevant aspects on the studies of policy agendas and policy change considers the diffusion occurred in the years 2000 with the application of its theoretical and methodological approaches to different societies and political systems beyond the United States. Consequently, another important achievement in the studies of agenda setting and policy change must be highlighted: studies of public policies in comparative perspective. Although agenda-setting studies have grown significantly in the international academic community, there are still some important points to be better explored. The intent of this Themed Special Issue of RAP is to contribute with the growing agenda-setting studies by highlighting the processes of policy changes and policy dynamics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1486-1497
Author(s):  
Felipe Gonçalves Brasil ◽  
Bryan D. Jones

Abstract This Thematic Special Issue on Policy Change and Policy Dynamics has as its main objective to present and discuss agenda setting, one of the most important issues for the study of public policies and the policy process. The agenda setting approach proposes an analytical approach on pre-decision processes to understand broader developments in public policy. To achieve that, it places the attention at the center of political action and relies on the fact that it is the change in attention that would cause, consequently, change in public policy. One of the most relevant aspects on the studies of policy agendas and policy change considers the diffusion occurred in the years 2000 with the application of its theoretical and methodological approaches to different societies and political systems beyond the United States. Consequently, another important achievement in the studies of agenda setting and policy change must be highlighted: studies of public policies in comparative perspective. Although agenda-setting studies have grown significantly in the international academic community, there are still some important points to be better explored. The intent of this Themed Special Issue of RAP is to contribute with the growing agenda-setting studies by highlighting the processes of policy changes and policy dynamics.


Author(s):  
Michael I. Fingerhood

Anabolic steroids are used to promote growth of skeletal muscle, increase lean body mass, and improve athletic performance. There are an estimated 1 million current or former users of anabolic steroids in the United States. Unlike other substances used nonmedically, anabolic steroids produce no acute psychoactive effects. Repeated use results in increased muscle mass and strength; many feel an increased level of aggression. There is no typical withdrawal syndrome, but reported symptoms include mood swings, restlessness, drug craving, loss of appetite, insomnia, reduced sex drive, and depression. Specific questions related to the use of anabolic steroids should be pursued with athletes and bodybuilders. Most medical complications of anabolic steroid use are the direct result of excessive exogenous androgens. There are no reports in the literature of treatment specific to nonmedical anabolic steroid use. Other drugs used to enhance athletic performance include growth hormone, stimulants, erythropoietin, blood products, gonadotrophins, beta-blockers, and diuretics.


1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (01) ◽  
pp. 236-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. D Walker ◽  
J. F Davidson ◽  
P Young ◽  
J. A Conkie

SummarySix anabolic steroids were assessed for their ability to enhance plasma fibrinolytic activity in males with ischaemic heart disease. Five 17α-alkylated steroids (Ethyloestrenol, Norethandrolone, Methandienone, Methylandrostenediol and Oxymetholone) were examined and all produced a significant increase in plasma plasminogen activator as measured by the euglobulin lysis time. The only non-17α-alkylated steroid studied (Methenolone acetate) failed to enhance fibrinolysis. The 17α-alkylated steroids studied all deserve more detailed evaluation of their long term effects on plasma fibrinolytic activity.


Author(s):  
Paul M. Renfro

Starting in the late 1970s, a moral panic concerning child kidnapping and exploitation gripped the United States. For many Americans, a series of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children, publicized through an emergent twenty-four-hour news cycle, signaled a “national epidemic” of child abductions perpetrated by strangers. Some observers insisted that fifty thousand or more children fell victim to stranger kidnappings in any given year. (The actual figure was and remains about one hundred.) Stranger Danger demonstrates how racialized and sexualized fears of stranger abduction—stoked by the news media, politicians from across the partisan divide, bereaved parents, and the business sector—helped to underwrite broader transformations in US political culture and political economy. Specifically, the child kidnapping scare further legitimated a bipartisan investment in “family values” and “law and order,” thereby enabling the development and expansion of sex offender registries, AMBER Alerts, and other mechanisms designed to safeguard young Americans and their families from “stranger danger”—and to punish the strangers who supposedly threatened them.


Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter presents the book’s macrolevel findings about the architecture of political communication and the news media ecosystem in the United States from 2015 to 2018. Two million stories published during the 2016 presidential election campaign are analyzed, along with another 1.9 million stories about Donald Trump’s presidency during his first year. The chapter examines patterns of interlinking between online media sources to understand the relations of authority and credibility among publishers, as well as the media sharing practices of Twitter and Facebook users to elucidate social media attention patterns. The data and mapping reveal not only a profoundly polarized media landscape but stark asymmetry: the right is more insular, skewed towards the extreme, and set apart from the more integrated media ecosystem of the center, center-left, and left.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Iliadis ◽  
Imogen Richards ◽  
Mark A Wood

‘Newsmaking criminology’, as described by Barak, is the process by which criminologists contribute to the generation of ‘newsworthy’ media content about crime and justice, often through their engagement with broadcast and other news media. While newsmaking criminological practices have been the subject of detailed practitioner testimonials and theoretical treatise, there has been scarce empirical research on newsmaking criminology, particularly in relation to countries outside of the United States and United Kingdom. To illuminate the state of play of newsmaking criminology in Australia and New Zealand, in this paper we analyse findings from 116 survey responses and nine interviews with criminologists working in universities in these two countries, which provide insight into the extent and nature of their news media engagement, and their related perceptions. Our findings indicate that most criminologists working in Australia or New Zealand have made at least one news media appearance in the past two years, and the majority of respondents view news media engagement as a professional ‘duty’. Participants also identified key political, ethical, and logistical issues relevant to their news media engagement, with several expressing a view that radio and television interviewers can influence criminologists to say things that they deem ‘newsworthy’.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adele N. Norris ◽  
Kalym Lipsey

The imprisonment rate in New Zealand ranks seventh among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yet the imprisonment of Indigenous people is on par with the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Almost 70% of the prison population in New Zealand is comprised of people racialized as non-White. In 2016, the National Government proposed to spend $2.5 billion over a 5-year period to build new prisons (1,500 prison beds) to accommodate a growing prison population. This study assessed public attitudes toward the need for more prisons and the equity of treatment of individuals within the criminal justice system. Findings from a 2016 and 2017 quantitative survey of 5,000 respondents each year revealed that roughly half of the respondents believed the proposed spending for new prisons to be extremely to somewhat necessary. A large proportion of respondents also believed Māori and Pākehā, if convicted of the same crime, are treated similarly within the criminal justice system. New Zealand scholars have critiqued news media coverage of contentious sociopolitical issues, such as crime and prisons, for employing tactics that have worked to construct a morally and culturally deficit “Other” while normalizing whiteness, rendering it invisible and raceless. This article concludes that this process masks racial disparities of individuals located within the criminal justice system and preserves the ideal that prisons are a normal function of the social landscape.


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