Anabolic steroids generally improve the level of athletic performance. Improved performance is, by most accounts, good for sport. MLB umpire Tim McClelland recently questioned how one could fault an athlete for doing something that makes him a better player. Sidney Gendin, professor of philosophy of law at Eastern Michigan University, has even suggested that we should only ban those athletes who refuse to use steroids.
Janean Marti argues in an editorial that professional athletes have an obligation to their fans to use steroids to improve their performance. After all, how else can an athlete like Alex Rodriguez plausibly begin to justify his $275 million baseball contract to his employers and/or to his fans? Furthermore, Marti highlights the utter hypocrisy of society’s condemnation of the unacceptable dangers of steroids and criticism of the wrong message it sends to young people (“A-Rod Owes Us More Steroids,” February 17).
If athletes like Alex Rodriguez want to use performance enhancing drugs to hit more home runs and validate the unearthly amount of dollars major league baseball owners heap on him, we, as fans, should welcome that.
Should society worry about the long-term affects steroids have on A-Rod’s body? Hell, we don’t even worry about U.S. soldiers in Iraq who must rumble the killing fields with inadequate armor and protection.
Do we care about how Black Lung Disease affects the coal-miners who provide some of the electricity you are using to read this? Are there many news articles complaining about that every day?
Oh, A-Rod using steroids will send our youth the wrong message. But sending young men to kill or be killed in Iraq for $50,000 a year while A-Rod earns $27.5 million that same year doesn’t?
Society has completely lost perspective with its hysteria over steroids in sports. To many people, the use of steroids represents one of the worst moral failures an athlete could commit. When videographic evidence of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana surfaced, everyone was relieved that at least it wasn’t steroids. Public perceptions of marijuana have gradually changed over time, but the present-day steroid hysteria makes reefer madness seem innocuous.
Steroids are so demonized that their use to improve athletic performance is considered worse than endangering the lives of other individuals (and children) while driving under the influence of alcohol or reckless driving and speeding. NBA Phoenix Suns basketball star Jason Richardson was arrested for child endangerment, reckless driving, excessive speed, and failure to use a car seat while driving his 2008 Mercedes Benz 90-mph in a 35-mph speed zone “ just 55-mph over the posted speed limit – with his 3-year old son unrestrained in the backseat of the vehicle. He was suspended for ONE game and lost $111,111 in salary. But at least he wasn’t using steroids. IF he were arrested for a steroid-related crime, he would have been suspend for at least 10-games and $1.2 million but, according the NBA anti-drug policy, could have been kicked out of the NBA forfeiting his entire $12.2 million annual salary.
Society’s priorities are clearly awry.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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