Live~NRGY

BBC News – Viewpoint: Why doping in baseball is punished so severely.

…””We’re a puritanical society,” says Jeffrey Miron, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

The fact that drugs are seen as immoral – and that they are illegal – has not put a stop to the use of performance-enhancing substances in baseball. And neither have the harmful side-effects they have on the body.”

Excuse me for interrupting with this personal opinion on doping whether in sports or the Olympics for that matter.

The rules in place concerning drug use is simple to understand. On someone’s own natural merits, using strength, skills and agility sports since the ancient times of Greece were meant to demonstrate the exceptional achievements and culmination of a participant and society as a whole in terms of Art, Grace of the human body and it’s interaction with it’s intellectual potentials.

When drugs especially performance enhancing drugs started to appear in any past contexts, the upper boundaries of what was naturally humanly possible started to become skewed. Those left hanging we’re left to scratch their collective heads in disbelief that they could be so far behind the finishing line.

When it was recognized that something was quite right and testing started to become the gauge of honesty, athletes could at least expect after years of dedicated training know that they had a chance to win as much as any other competitor.

When cheating became the new norm as a way to circumvent testing, I’m willing to bet that a majority of the competition knew what was going on, yet for fear of being labelled a sour puss loser, would just clam up, grin and bear it for possible fear of reprisals. The sports and Olympian industries are monster money mega businesses. It just doesn’t pay to speak up.

If honest dedicated athletes who train for years on end at a chance to win, and they expect a level playing field, then it is not that we are ‘PURITANICAL’ around drug laws. Either ever athlete out there does drugs and it’s on record so that we can measure human potentials with the ‘NEW’ NORM or we don’t do drugs and see where that takes us.

Don’t have some win year after year leaving all other career minded sports individual who plays by one set of rules yet the other who respects the rules as a level playing field only to lose without ever having had a chance in hell of winning or coming close to it either.

That’s a disgrace to any sport or Olympic dream. Spell out the rules one way or the other and let the athletes decide what they want. Either drugs or no drugs. Not a few select well hidden winners who take it all and leave ever one else in the dust scratching their heads in bewilderment and disbelief.

As for punishments – that’s you’re ballgame and gauge of the sport industry’s willingness to tackle and face the issue honestly once and for all.