Randy Radley Balko questions if Congress really has any business preaching fairness to pro ball players:
Representative Davis and fellow baseball antagonists say steroids and amphetamines give athletes an “unfair advantage” over the competition. Never mind that after the 2000 census, Davis led efforts to gerrymander his own congressional district to ensure he’d never need to worry about re-election. Due to gerrymandering, Davis ran unopposed in 2002, as did one in five of his congressional colleagues.
Davis also recently sneaked a provision into federal legislation that prevented an apartment complex from going up in his district because, according to the Washington Post, he feared it would bring too many Democrats into the area.
Via Hit and Run.
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Although I am as much against gerrymandering as the next guy, I think that there are several reasons other than fairness to oppose the use of steroids in sports.
For one thing, legalizing steroids would mean that players would almost always have to use them to win – and thus make dying young of liver cancer or any other steroid ailment a precondition of playing sports.
Secondly, if you think that sports stars are too violent now, can you imagine how much more rape, bar brawls, et al. they would commit if they were all hopped up on huge levels of artificial testosterone? Steroids make people (more) aggressive and violent. The detriments to society of having brutish hulks (with the same mentality as The Hulk), hopped up on even higher levels than they have currently, as our sports stars would far outweigh whatever freedom is involved in allowing the use of steroids.
Radley Balko.
[Whoops! Thanks, correction made. –Amp]
Now let’s see – number of major league baseball players- if we count all men on the 40-man roster would be 1200. Of those half are pitchers, so in a country of 280,000,000 people, Congress chooses to spend a week on an issue that directly affects 600-700 of those, and probably a third to a half of those aren’t US citizens, and it’s something that MLB should be able to take care of. And what about football ferchrissakes?
The thing is, the steroid hearings were there because it’s easier to pose for the camera than to legislate.
While I don’t favor getting the feds involved on the steroid issue, don’t undersetimate its importance.
People other than professional athletes use steroids, including college athletes, high school athletes, and bodybuilders.
If it jsut destoryed their bodies, well then you could argue that it is their problem.
But steroids also makes one more violent and aggressive. While the power and lack of accountability may have a lot to do with all of the professional athletes accused of rape, use of artificial testosterone doesn’t help the situation.
Preventing steroid abuse is, I would think, an anti-rape issue.
Cops use them too, and that causes lots of problems.
‘Roid rage is a real problem. Sports Illustrated did an excellent investigative story on body builders, steroids and the rate of violent crimes including murder among those who are professional bodybuilders. Pretty sobering.
They busted Tim Montgomery, and stripped his former WR in the 100m, even though they didn’t have a positive test. It was the first case where an athlete was suspended for steroid use based on testimony of witnesses and other evidence.
Steroid use in some field events(i.e. shotput and hammar throw) is bad enough so that suspensions and bannings have been given to numerous Olympic medalists and WR holders. But they find a test for one drug, a new derivitive that is undetectable comes out the next day.
In the women’s track and field events, most of the records are considered suspicious, from the sprints(suspected steroid use) to the distances(EPO, probably one of the more dangerous substances believed to have been responsible for some of the Chinese women’s records in the early 1990s and the deaths of up to 20 elite cyclists and other athletes.).
It’s cheating, and it harms your health, both emotionally and physically.
I am against steroid use for all the above listed reasons. In addition, I am against steroid use in sports because children look up to athelets. They are role models.
At the health food store that I used to work at, they had a product called “strip” that one could take to literally strip the drugs from one’s body. It’s legal. And, yes, I questioned why it would be in a health food store. The people who came in to get it ranged from weekend doobies to hard core. We had semi truck drivers come in and laugh about escaping getting caught. They practically bragged about it.
All I could think of was them driving down the road, high, while at the wheel of those machines. I just hope no one is killed by these people.
When a group of employees raised questions about selling this item in a health food store, management said that it was a money maker, end of discussion.
I think that things like “strip” are legal, ironically, is that there is no way in hell they could possibly work. Maybe it could make you pee a little more, but probably wouldn’t really flush you out any better than drinking extra water.
In fact, if an employer or such decides to test your hair or nails rather than urine or blood, products like “strip” will not help you at all. It seems as though your hair is a lifetime registry of every chemical substance you’ve taken.
My current employer did a hair test that went back 90 days, and you’d better believe I saw some men in there with out a single hair anywhere on their bodies. The nurses just took fingernails and toenails instead.
I may not agree that certain drugs should be illegal, but since they are and I value my freedom, I simply refrain. That makes it easy to pass my employer’s random drug screenings. I just think that since athletes are role models for our youth, they shouldn’t be allowed to use steroids.
And then there is the increase in aggression that follows anabolic steroid use, and that may contribute to incidents where athletes rape or sexually assault women.