Performance Enhancing Drugs

As another baseball player comes out and admits to using steroids, I grapple with the thought of why substances as these should be banned from use. I don’t advocate having youngsters or for that matter anyone under the age of eighteen using them unless they're prescribed by a doctor, but I do think that anyone over that age could make their own decision and choice of using them or not given all the pros and cons of taking such substances.

Major League Baseball is so far behind the eight ball on this issue. No matter what testing they have set up to detect steroid use, they will never catch or detect other masked performance enhancing drugs. They will always be three or four football fields behind.

One side of me keeps asking why we should care about an adult’s decision to inject something in their body that will help them perform better even though years from now they might suffer the consequences (pain, suffering and maybe even death). I think the government should stop interfering with someone’s right to choose whatever they want to do. What they should do is to provide them as much information as possible so that each individual can make a choice whether to use a product or not.

There are many things such as smoking and alcohol that could be dangerous to someone’s health, yet the government hasn’t made these illegal. If the government is so concerned about our health why haven’t they done anything about protecting us from the fast food chains that sell us food that is unhealthy and is the leading cause of obesity in this country?

Professional sports of all types are to be considered as another form of entertainment. Athletes in this century are paid extremely well and the better they perform the more money they will receive. Given the aforementioned, wouldn’t you if put in their shoes do whatever it took to increase your opportunity of making a few million more a year?

Do we pass laws to ban certain procedures such as breast augmentation, or gastric bypass surgery, or the myriad of other risky medical procedures that our actors and actresses subject themselves to each year for the sole purpose of looking better with the chance that they will be in greater demand? If Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa or Mark Maguire want to use steroids or HGH (Human Growth Hormone) or amphetamines or whatever other performance enhancing product, I say good luck to them. The only thing I ask of Major League Baseball is to differentiate the achievements these men accomplish versus the numbers that ballplayers put up in the years prior to the usage of performance enhancing drugs.

Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie May’s achievements should remain in tact. The records that are currently being set today should be grouped with like players of this era who are being painted with the broad brush of athletes who have used of performance enhancing drugs and that without them they probably would not have been able to break long standing records.

The main argument against this always comes back to the dangers that are presented to our youngsters who hold these athletes in high esteem. It’s very hard to make them understand that the majority of these athletes are probably the worst role models that they could have. Major corporations use stars such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Lebraun James, Tom Brady, etc. and pay them huge sums of money to push their products. They know that people look up to them and that they want to mimic them in every way. If little Johnny in Philadelphia sees Donovan McNabb eating Chunky Soup on TV be sure that he’ll soon ask his mother to buy that for him.

It would be nice if athletes took more responsibility in their actions. Today I read a little speech that Pope John Paul II gave on the occasion of the blessing of the Olympic Stadium of Rome, before the 1990 World Cup. He said, "Sportsmen all over the world are looking at you. Be conscious of your responsibility, not only to be the champion in the stadium, but also the man who with his whole person must become a model for millions of young people who have need of leaders, not of idols. They have need of men who are able to communicate to them a taste for the arduous, a sense of discipline, the value of honesty and the joy of altruism. Your testimony, coherent and generous, can stimulate them to face the problems of life with the same commitment and enthusiasm."

These words should also resonate on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill. There seems to be an abundance of idols and a scarcity of leaders.