This question is spawned from the latest article citing an "academic" (Professor Miller Brown) who claims that steroids, PED's or whatever you want to call the illegal substances in sports should be legalized.
To be perfectly honest, from my perspective their arguments are legitimate. While being passionate about Anti-Doping can lead one to autmatically curl back at their perspective, I understand the logic of their claims. Not all PED use is clearly connected to the adverse effects we all assume they cause, and some of the sports that the PED's are illegal for often lead to adverse effects later in life no matter what you do or do not take while playing.
And there is also the issue of some things being illegal (like, for example, platelet injections for soft tissue injuries being illegal in track) when they could provide clear benefits to athletes.
But there is ALWAYS one thing that these "legalize the PED's, just make it all legal" people don't take into account, and I believe it is the number one reason that "doping" should always be illegal and banned: the little guy. Legalizing PED's does not level the playing field, they instead skew it further towards inequality.
How, exactly, does widespread distribution of PED's get funded? How does the 18 year old prodigy suddenly qualify as "eligible" for PED use? How does the superior talent, who has no money or support, benefit from being required to take part in PED use to be given a fair chance at competing at the highest level possible?
If we just legalized it all, who gets control of all the so called "logical" PED distribution? The shoe companies who are funding the athletes (meaning that the only way you can get the PED's you need is to prove yourself as an elite athelete.....which you can only do with PED use and causing an impossible cycle of inaccessibility)? The drug comapnies (meaning the rich only get richer, and presumably you only get PED's if you know someone or already are someone)? Governments (meaning that we can't even figure out how to properly provide REAL health care for everyone, but we are willing to provide our nations athletes with whatever they need to get Gold medals)?
From my perspective, there is no real logical, fair way to legalize PED's. Everyone would have to be able to have access to them to prove whether or not they are good enough to be the best in the world. Every tall, skinny, black guy who wanted to try to bulk up and become a shot putter and showed even the smallest talent for it would have to be given a chance, and the drugs, and every short white kid who wanted to try to become a sprinter and showed possible ability for it would have to be given the drugs. Anyone who couldn't get it due to financial issues or stereotype problems would be getting screwed as much as the people who right now lose out on medals and money to juiced up and un-caught athletes.
Lets be honest here, folks,we STILL don't even have reasonable distrubtion of proper training plans (uneducated coaches, ignorant training schemes, etc., for athletes who deserve more). So where and how, exactly, does properly, safely, and fairly distrubuting PED's and educating on their proper use come into play?
Why isn't this ever discussed when these "academic" fools discuss how we clearly need to stop fighting against doping?
Am I alone here? Am I just talking to walls or is my logic somehow terribly flawed?
To be perfectly honest, from my perspective their arguments are legitimate. While being passionate about Anti-Doping can lead one to autmatically curl back at their perspective, I understand the logic of their claims. Not all PED use is clearly connected to the adverse effects we all assume they cause, and some of the sports that the PED's are illegal for often lead to adverse effects later in life no matter what you do or do not take while playing.
And there is also the issue of some things being illegal (like, for example, platelet injections for soft tissue injuries being illegal in track) when they could provide clear benefits to athletes.
But there is ALWAYS one thing that these "legalize the PED's, just make it all legal" people don't take into account, and I believe it is the number one reason that "doping" should always be illegal and banned: the little guy. Legalizing PED's does not level the playing field, they instead skew it further towards inequality.
How, exactly, does widespread distribution of PED's get funded? How does the 18 year old prodigy suddenly qualify as "eligible" for PED use? How does the superior talent, who has no money or support, benefit from being required to take part in PED use to be given a fair chance at competing at the highest level possible?
If we just legalized it all, who gets control of all the so called "logical" PED distribution? The shoe companies who are funding the athletes (meaning that the only way you can get the PED's you need is to prove yourself as an elite athelete.....which you can only do with PED use and causing an impossible cycle of inaccessibility)? The drug comapnies (meaning the rich only get richer, and presumably you only get PED's if you know someone or already are someone)? Governments (meaning that we can't even figure out how to properly provide REAL health care for everyone, but we are willing to provide our nations athletes with whatever they need to get Gold medals)?
From my perspective, there is no real logical, fair way to legalize PED's. Everyone would have to be able to have access to them to prove whether or not they are good enough to be the best in the world. Every tall, skinny, black guy who wanted to try to bulk up and become a shot putter and showed even the smallest talent for it would have to be given a chance, and the drugs, and every short white kid who wanted to try to become a sprinter and showed possible ability for it would have to be given the drugs. Anyone who couldn't get it due to financial issues or stereotype problems would be getting screwed as much as the people who right now lose out on medals and money to juiced up and un-caught athletes.
Lets be honest here, folks,we STILL don't even have reasonable distrubtion of proper training plans (uneducated coaches, ignorant training schemes, etc., for athletes who deserve more). So where and how, exactly, does properly, safely, and fairly distrubuting PED's and educating on their proper use come into play?
Why isn't this ever discussed when these "academic" fools discuss how we clearly need to stop fighting against doping?
Am I alone here? Am I just talking to walls or is my logic somehow terribly flawed?
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