Maybe not directly but look at all the pros and ammatures who have died from heart failure. At very young ages too.
So I'm a firm believer in moderation. I don't know how many of the people you're referring to overused but I would bet on quite a few. If you run steroids, take care in the use, take adequate breaks and don't run them back to back for years (run, pct, break, run repeate) I don't see them causing lasting damage to a body.
I think one of the big issues might be that you can't really talk to most doctors about this and get good guidance, pharma quality gear (for some), and have insurance cover regular testing. So you end up in the dark on potentially damaging effects. If you could pop into the doc office and tell them you wanted these things, and could get them, you would go that route. The doc could refuse you if you had just done it and it was too soon. In that case I'd also bet most would wait so they could get it from a reliable source.
There is, however, an undeniable tenancy to run more often, at heavier doses, with shorter breaks, or in increasingly complex stacks. Feeling like superman is pretty awesome, so potential for abuse exists. There could also be major bad news in the combination of two or more benign components to a stack, especially with new gear, new peptides. Some of that stuff is known and some won't be for a long time, if ever. Think of how grapefruit was suddenly on all these medication bottles with a warning. Who knew that was coming down the line? Not the guy that had one everyday with breakfast and his lipitor, thinking he was eating right and taking meds to lower his cholesterol... Whoops.
But like I said I think if you do this sparingly and monitor yourself much as possible you can get a jump on any bad effects and desist immediately. My current run is the first in 5 years since the last. The last run was real gear (Winny) preceded by two years and some now illegal PH at that time. I might not have done anything again if I did not end up in a bad car accident and find myself having major trouble rebuilding my body. So far I've been pleased at my progress and lack of reinjury. After this PH cycle I'll be off for a few months and then I'll probably go for a real AAS run (didn't want to start out with that simply because I felt I might not have been able to take full advantage of it). I'm going to give myself about 8 months after the real gear before going back at it again.
So yeah it can be bad, and good. I've found it can be medically helpful even though i talked to my doctor and they told me there was nothing available that would help me with my screwed up joints and quickly vanishing musculature. Turns out there is and they just aren't trained to use these things that way.