Should sports accept steroids?
The more I read about the steroid scandal spreading across the nation from the California nutrition and supplement company BALCO, the more difficulty I have working up a good fit of outrage. I find myself wondering if the time has come to ask ourselves the radical question: Should we consider making performance-enhancing drugs legal in professional sports?
Whether we are ready to acknowledge them or not, here are the facts: Professional sports have evolved into cutthroat businesses in which performance is the only measure of worth. Athletes have increasingly turned to pharmaceuticals to push their performances to the highest and most rewarded levels.
Athletes who abstain from the performance-enhancers risk falling below the ever-higher playing standards and thus risk losing their jobs. Teams and leagues are hardly vigilant about catching users, because the money pours in when paying customers and television executives watch near-mythic characters crush home runs or break downfield tackles.
The most important thing to keep in mind: The drugs aren’t going away, no matter how many rules are posted on locker room bulletin boards.
As I understand it, performance enhancers are illegal in sports for two primary reasons. One is the safety of the athletes. This is an important concern. Steroid abuse has been linked to all kinds of physical and mental problems, even death. Like most prescription drugs, steroids are dangerous when used improperly. But steroids and human growth hormone themselves are not “bad.’ Doctors prescribe them for any number of medical and cosmetic reasons.
So if you concede that these drugs are here to stay in sports, wouldn’t the players be safer if they didn’t go to backroom hucksters with no medical background but rather to doctors who can prescribe and supervise usage according to a player’s medical history, physical condition and professional goals? This wouldn’t guarantee that players would not suffer damage from the steroids. But wouldn’t players be safer if a doctor thoroughly explained the risks and benefits, and let the players make informed choices?
The other main reason performance-enhancing drugs are banned has to do with the integrity of the game. I understand the argument. It would not be fair if “juiced’ players broke the records of old-time players who didn’t have the benefit of performance-enhancers. We’d have to put asterisks by the records, some say. Perhaps they’re right.
But I wonder how we take into account other advancements in equipment, medical know-how, physical conditioning and game strategies that give today’s players advantages over their predecessors. Pitching, for instance, has become so specialized that closers rarely pitch more than an inning at a time, allowing them to rack up saves at rates unheard of in previous generations. Should there be asterisks by their records?
One could argue, actually, that making performance-enhancing drugs legal in professional sports would help the integrity of the game because the playing field would be more level. Every athlete would have access to pharmaceuticals.
These are times, too, in which consumer-driven prescription drugs are advertised on television for everything we want enhanced, from moods to erections. So I’m wondering why professional athletes shouldn’t have the same freedom to make informed choices and take managed risks for the sake of something as substantial as their livelihoods.
Having written this, I admit to thinking about the future with some dread, knowing that every generation strives to top the one before it: What on earth will the sons and daughters of today’s athletes have to do to surpass their superhero parents?
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is [email protected].