I’m sick of people crying foul about this stuff. The scapegoats. It’s always going to be there. Some will get busted and some won’t. It’s beyond human capability (for instance) to run 100 M in less than blah blah blah seconds. That record will continue to be beaten. By people with performance enhancing drugs.
I say level the playing fields. Make steroids legal. If an athlete wants to destroy his or her body in the process, so be it. A brief shining light. Whatever.
Mark my words, that sort of artificial catalyst will be the norm within 15 years.
Trust me, moral arguments are not going to win this debate. It’s all about MONEY.
Whoever has the best pharmacist WINS!
Such is the future of sports. Hate it at your peril, but that is where we are headed.
Jimi gives Performance Enhancing Drugs 
And heart attacks on the oval make for GOOD TV!
[quote=“jimipresley”]I’m sick of people crying foul about this stuff. The scapegoats. It’s always going to be there. Some will get busted and some won’t. It’s beyond human capability (for instance) to run 100 M in less than blah blah blah seconds. That record will continue to be beaten. By people with performance enhancing drugs.
I say level the playing fields. Make steroids legal. If an athlete wants to destroy his or her body in the process, so be it. A brief shining light. Whatever.
Mark my words, that sort of artificial catalyst will be the norm within 15 years.
Trust me, moral arguments are not going to win this debate. It’s all about MONEY.
Whoever has the best pharmacist WINS!
Such is the future of sports. Hate it at your will, but that is where we are headed.[/quote]
I still love the rank absurdity of Ross Rebagliati getting stripped of the first ever gold medal for snowboarding at the 98 Winter Olympics when traces of marijuana were found in his blood.
First off, if there was no marijuana, nobody would have ever invented snowboarding.
Second, as, IIRC, Robin Williams, said on some talk show, dude, if you consider marijuana to be a performance enhancer, well shiiiit, you really don’t have a clue. :roflmao:
Fortunately, the decision was eventually overturned, mostly since marijuana was not on the list of banned substances.
(Apologies for the awful quality of the Youtube video. I guess SNL/ NBC don’t allow these videos out there, and want us to go to Hulu, even though in Taiwan we can’t. If in the future that video is taken down, Google “SNL steroid olympics”)
making everything legal would cause huge problems, and take away from the spirit of competition, moving it from the playing fields to the laboratory.
the system may not be the best, but people are still getting caught.
it is like law enforcement, they don’t catch all the criminals, but they occasionally justify their salaries.
You can’t ride the Tour de France on mineral water.
You can take steroids all you want, but if you don’t have the genetic capability to sprint like a merfer, you’re still not going to beat Usain Bolt.
I can’t see that working out.
There’s a parallel in farming: dosing animals with random drugs to make them fatter. Most governments are (slowly) making it illegal because it has no economic benefit: as soon as one farmer starts to dope his animals, market prices fall because that farmer can offer a bigger animal for only slightly more money, and all other farmers have to start doping to make a profit. The end result is that nobody does well except the drug companies. Farming costs are higher and animal welfare goes down the toilet.
Athletes would just end up competing on the basis of how many chemicals they can ingest without exploding.
And yeah … as bismarck says, drugs can’t alter your basic genetics and physiology. All they can do is help you build more muscle, and in competitive sports that’s not the whole story.
On the other hand … for non-competitive use, I can’t see what the problem is. Anabolic steroids and beta2-agonists are extremely safe drugs if used sensibly, and the only obvious risk is from unskilled injections, counterfeits, or dirty needles. As usual, I think it’s only America that gets really worked up about that kind of thing (while, incidentally, permitting farmers to dose up their animals with pretty much anything they like).
Only very slightly off-topic:
Eddie Izzard-Stoned Olympics
youtube.com/watch?v=M5X-9brvoq0
