Performance Enhancing Drugs: Bad for Athletes, Good for Students

[MGee]

From The Matt Walsh Blog (http://themattwalshblog.com/):

Some players in the NFL have been suspended for using an illegal performance enhancing drug. The drug in this case is Adderall. You may also know Adderall as the prescription pill given to adolescent children to make them more cooperative in school.

So here are the questions everyone should be asking but nobody is: if it’s cheating to use the drug to enhance your performance on the football field, why isn’t it cheating to use it to enhance your performance in the classroom? And if the substance is deemed too dangerous for 250 pound athletes, why do we consider it safe for 12 year olds? Why do we applaud a kid who graduates high school with the help of performance enhancing substances and then demand criminal convictions of athletes who win championships with the help of performance enhancing substances?

America, you seriously need to get your story straight when it comes to this whole drug thing. You say medicinal marijuana should be illegal but then you go out and get a prescription for opium every time you twist your ankle. You say nobody should use drugs to get high but then you stock your medicine cabinet full of prescription hallucinogens and uppers and pop a few every time you feel a little gloomy. You say it’s not fair to use drugs that “enhance performance” but then you put your child on mental steroids and brag to your friends about how he’s all the sudden magically doing better than his classmates. Hell, you might even sermonize about how nobody should take shortcuts right before washing down some FDA approved speed “diet pills”.

I don’t know why I bother pointing these things out. I realize the drug laws are simply in place to raise revenue for the state and create jobs for law enforcement. I also realize that there are millions of drug addled pill popping addicts in this country who will still, with a straight face, call themselves “anti-drug”. That’s just the way it is. Inconsistency and hypocrisy doesn’t bother most people. The fact that their world view is half-baked and totally arbitrary also doesn’t bother them.

It all makes me feel kind of depressed. Good thing I can go to the doctor and get some legal LSD to take care of that.

[Acala]

Legal LSD? Whatchoo talkin' bout?

[PaulConventionWV]

To be fair, the government has nothing to do with the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports. The governing body of the sport may, but not the US government.

[BSWPaulsen]

The government didn't get involved, at least in the US, in performance enhancing drugs until the first Bush was in office despite steroids being first discovered and used in the '30s. In the early '90s we had that stupid fuck Lyle Alzado passing his brain cancer off on AAS instead of multiple concussions, as NFL players tend to get, and are just discovering the real effects of on brain tissue. The IOC had banned them for the Seoul Olympics ('88), and users were accused of cheating, but instead of keeping to themselves immediately tried to apply State power to solve the problem. The AMA was initially opposed to illegalizing them, but sociopolitical pressure made them capitulate. The USA had the "heyday of bodybuilding" in the '80s, and usage wasn't all that uncommon - due to their legal nature doctors often assisted the user and made it safer.

Only idiots support the War on Drugs, but steroids are right there with marijuana when it comes to stuff that has no good reason for illegality. They are used in medicine regularly to this day, and form the basis of HRT in aging males, a practice that markedly improves performance and quality of life when supervised properly.

For modern day comedy look at MLB and its problems with deer antler velvet. Because it is a natural promulgator of a banned substance they don't know what to do with themselves, even though athletes are using it increasingly greater numbers. It's sheer stupidity that deer antlers may become a target in the asinine War on Against Performance Enhancement that all started through the ridiculous idea that all athletes should be on the same playing field when they aren't from birth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigger,_Stronger,_Faster* is a good introduction to this issue.