On Thursday, a Buffalo-centric website created a stir with a report that authorities at the Canada-U.S. border found steroids in the possession of Bills linebacker Shawne Merriman.
Merriman took to Twitter last night to deny the allegation. He provided more details to the Buffalo News.
“No problem,” Merriman said. “I came across as I normally do. I go there to get some massage therapy work done. They just questioned me about some bags and stuff I had. I was stopped and that was it. I was coming to camp. I had suitcases and stuff like that. They just wanted to go through all my stuff.”
He said nothing was confiscated. “I had stuff coming to camp,” Merriman said. “They went through all my suitcases and that was it.”
And that apparently will be the end of the story. Government officials had nothing to report, according to the Buffalo News. There’s no prosecution, and Thomas Russert of the U.S. Border Patrol (I’ve got a sawbuck that says the guy is related to Luke) said that, unless there’s an arrest or criminal charges, no other information can be released.
Of course, that leaves a donut hole into which the BuffaloSportsDaily.com report theoretically can fit. Per the original report, Merriman wasn’t arrested or charged. And if no information will be released by U.S. Border Patrol unless someone is arrested or charged, we’ll never know with certainty what was or wasn’t found in Merriman’s possession.
That said, one of the fundamental assumptions of the BuffaloSportsDaily.com report is deeply flawed. “He was not arrested and booked because from what I’m told,” the report states, “simply being in the possession of the substance is not technically illegal.”
The problem is that possession of steroids is illegal, absent a valid medical prescription. (Indeed, if Raiders receiver Louis Murphy can be busted for possessing Viagra without a prescription, Merriman can be busted for having steroids without a prescription.)
And so the absence of an arrest means that Merriman wasn’t in possession of steroids.