Baseball’s Steroid Education Program

The Mitchell Report acknowledged that current steroid education programs used by Major League Baseball that focus on the dangerous side effects of anabolic steroids are generally ineffective:

[T]hese health risks generally will not deter a player from using these substances. This is because players who use or are considering using performance enhancing substances do not consider them dangerous if used properly. This view is reinforced when players see that other players who they know are using performance enhancing substances arc not experiencing the adverse health effects described in the educational materials.

With the widespread use of steroids by baseball players and the lack of significant negative side effects, it is not surprising that scare tactics using overstated and exaggerated dangers of steroids are unsuccessful at steroid prevention in baseball.

But Senator Mitchell’s proposed solution to restore credibility to steroid education programs seems like a disaster. The Mitchell Report proposes offering education on alternative methods to achieve the same results.

[W]hile it is important to educate players about the dangers of performance enhancing substances, it is just as important to educate them on how to achieve the same results through proper training, nutrition, and supplements that are legal and safe.

So, all baseball players need is a creative chemist who can discover or synthesize a legal supplement [that complies with Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)] with steroid-like effects. This legal supplement will be considered safe since newly introduced supplements are assumed to be safe under DSHEA unless proven otherwise by the FDA.

And the baseball player will have a legal and safe supplement to use.

This is the recommendation of the Mitchell Report?

But isn’t that what started the whole steroids in baseball scandal? THG redux.

About the author

Millard

MESO-Rx | Website

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.