Drugs Cheats

[Saj]

Do they get the punishment they deserve ?

Your thoughts ?

[ZM]

yes definetly
its there choice to use drugs and they know the consequences, i tink its stupid to take drugs if u already have a career, y throw that away?

[Waqar's inswinging yorker]

NO WAY! shane warne got 1 year which is disgraceful. For me the ban should be 2 years - simple as that, be it a recreational drug or 4 years for performance enhancing and skipping a drugs test constitues a failed test IMO and a 2yr ban should be enforced

[Officer Barbrady]

Don't think I agree with it but here's an interesting article by an economist I read on the topic recently. Long but if anyone is bothered...

Is it science, drugs or is it practice, practice, practice?

Allen Sanderson
June 4, 2002

Late last month, newspapers carried front-page stories and devoted editorial space to the revelation of rampant anabolic steroid use in Major League Baseball. Prominent media commentators lamented that the use of such performance-enhancing substances could threaten the integrity of the game, taint the prodigious accomplishments of sluggers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds, and render long-term comparisons of play and players meaningless. However, it is not obvious that such drug use is fundamentally different or any more unnatural than the myriad of other training regimes that athletes follow, or that we countenance in our own lives and in those who compete for top prizes in many public arenas.

While we extol the virtues of natural athletes and level playing fields, the era of Roy Hobbs fashioning a bat from a fallen tree or a teen perfecting his fastball by throwing against the side of a barn is over. (Roger Bannister became the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier in 1954 while he was a full-time medical student and followed a sporadic and unscientific training regimen; that would be utterly unthinkable today.) It is difficult if not outright impossible to draw a meaningful, consistent line between what constitutes natural versus unnatural competition with regard to the development of athletic skills.

For example, how natural is it that a youngster would have to be swimming competitively by age 6 if he or she is to have any hope of making the U.S. Olympic team? To achieve greatness skaters have to be hitting the ice before they can read. (The last three female Olympic figure skating champions were 16 years of age or younger.) Unless a child is practicing the violin seriously before the age of 12, becoming a virtuoso is nearly impossible. Many success stories hinge on overbearing parents who provide their children with an early start, a factor of immense importance in athletics, beauty pageants and film and pop culture industries.

Are diuretics that help wrestlers make weight classes or beta-blockers that slow the heartbeat for archers and marksmen natural or unnatural? How about protein bars, dietary supplements, vitamins and electrolyte sports drinks? Painkillers--injections and pills--are as common in NFL locker rooms as taped ankles and jewelry. Do we want the ability to withstand pain to be a key ingredient in performance? Modern surgical procedures and protective gear allow athletes to compete with broken bones or steel pins in their arms or legs. The recent development of the V-technique means that ski jumpers must maintain anorexic frames that a supermodel would envy.

Some athletes have the time and financial resources to train at high altitudes, or to attend privileged summer camps, have access to better facilities or hire a sports psychologist, while others don't or can't.

In other personal and professional competitions--finding a mate, landing that job or promotion, becoming a star--hair coloring, cosmetics and cosmetic surgery are de rigueur. Is being born beautiful more deserved or earned than acquiring beauty medically? Scientific advances in genetic engineering and gene therapy will shortly test our resolve when it comes to thinking about what is "humanly possible." The introduction of foreign genes into the body could even be done at the embryo stage of development, thus producing an infant who already possesses the potential for athletic greatness, a synthetic counterpart to the offspring of two gifted athletes--tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf-- who procreate naturally now.

The commonly accepted excuse for banning drugs is that they can produce health hazards such as mood swings in the short run and longer term damage to organs, and that once one competitor starts down that road all others must endanger their own lives to have any hope of success. But working 100 hours a week in a dot-com start-up, a law firm or a medical residency can be just as harmful--and also cause others to meet that standard. Practice and long hours, not natural ability, may be the key ingredient in record-breaking performances and financial success. Athletes are willing to make sacrifices, cut corners and take risks when the stakes get high enough.

Thirty years ago when the stakes were not nearly as high, there may have been less interest in drugs. But now in the era of free agency and the generation of enormous revenues from television and state-of-the art facilities, and when the margin of victory, and thus the difference between stardom and anonymity, can be measured in hundredths of a second or one stroke out of 270 on a golf course, there are huge personal incentives for an athlete to test the limits of endurance, pain and chemistry.

This climate, of course, is certainly not confined to baseball. We can recall the controversies surrounding distance runner Mary Decker Slaney, sprinter Ben Johnson, or 1996 Olympic swimming medalist Michelle Smith. The drug culture and blood doping so endemic in cycling haunted Lance Armstrong throughout his Tour de France three-peat. But it figures more prominently in baseball because that sport is so foolishly wedded to history and to the insistence that nothing has changed--or should be changed.

Individual records are less important in the other three most prominent professional leagues, and in other sports, such as swimming, ice-skating or track and field, for example, there is open recognition that technology has made long-term comparisons less interesting or vital. The pool in Sydney and the ice in Salt Lake City contributed significantly to the plethora of world records set in those recent Olympics. Advances in clothing, equipment and surfaces--from cinders to clay and now to synthetics--continue to produce new track records. In short, beer-sotted bleacher fans and baseball commentators need to get a life.

As the 2002 season grinds along, far more damage will likely be done to the integrity of baseball from the selfish machinations of the commissioner and players' association over how to increase and carve up the spoils of their lucrative cartel than from what outfielders are storing in their kitchen cabinets and lockers.

Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune

[Hash]

drugs which are recreational drugs are, in my opinion, not a matter for the sports authorities. They are a matter for the police.

Drugs which are performance enhancing deserve a life ban in my opinion.

[Geordie Ahmed]

I agree with Hash

They shud get life bans for using performance enhancing drugs - why shud they be allowed to have an advantage over other sportsmen/women who work hard and follow the rules