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Dopes
Performance-enhancing drugs for professional athletes - I'm for 'em. And I think this whole anti-drug thing, which is mostly a spin-off from the Fed's highly ..cough...cough... highly successful war on drugs, is asinine.
A person whose career and income depends on performance ought to be able to take any drug which enhances his (and we'll assume for this posting that his = his/her) performance.
There should be no line drawn between prescription drugs and OTC drugs. After all, anything you take which makes you perform better is performance-enhancing. If you have a cold, Dayquil, aspirin, Afrin, etc. all enhance your performance. And there are arm braces, athletic tape, ice packs, and on and on.
"But those are just temporary" I hear you cry.
How about Lasix, contacts and prescription lenses? Those are not just performance-enhancing, they are performance-enabling, and permanent, but they are allowed and no one even blinks an eye.
And baseball mitts. Those are performance-enhancing. I have two permanently bent fingers (from catching balls with a un-gloved hand) to prove it.
Lance Armstrong had cancer. He beat it, to a large extent with drugs. I don't know anyone who has a problem with that (I don't know any Christian Scientists). So what's the problem with him taking drugs which allow him to take that recovery to its logical conclusion?
And don't be whining to me about the competition. They should all be allowed to take whatever. Because the whole original idea behind anti-dope rules and laws was to make the competition "fair".
Let's talk about that piece of malarkey. I'm 5'8" tall, have broad shoulders (wider than a coach airplane seat) and a lot of upper body strength just from the way I'm built. I probably could have become a weight lifter, a judo champ or maybe a baseball slugger. Maybe. But what drug can I take to become a basketball star? Or a track star? Or an NFL starter? Because, you see, the drugs don't make the athlete, they merely make the athlete better at what he can already do. You have to start off with the basic physique for your chosen sport. Few people make it to a professional team in any sport without that. And many who do have that, don't make it because they don't have the instincts needed to go along with the physique. Drugs can help that a little, but it does no good for a baseball player to take steroids if he can't hit the ball.
Moving right along, how about other drugs - pot, crack, meth, etc.? Well, those are performance-killing drugs, and over time the athlete taking them will no longer be able to function at a pro-sports level. Except, maybe, for pot. The jury is still out on that. Maybe when Timmy writes his memoirs we'll find out.
The day she died the neighbors Came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen,
She was the happiest... corpse... I'd ever seen.
-Cabaret
A person whose career and income depends on performance ought to be able to take any drug which enhances his (and we'll assume for this posting that his = his/her) performance.
There should be no line drawn between prescription drugs and OTC drugs. After all, anything you take which makes you perform better is performance-enhancing. If you have a cold, Dayquil, aspirin, Afrin, etc. all enhance your performance. And there are arm braces, athletic tape, ice packs, and on and on.
"But those are just temporary" I hear you cry.
How about Lasix, contacts and prescription lenses? Those are not just performance-enhancing, they are performance-enabling, and permanent, but they are allowed and no one even blinks an eye.
And baseball mitts. Those are performance-enhancing. I have two permanently bent fingers (from catching balls with a un-gloved hand) to prove it.
Lance Armstrong had cancer. He beat it, to a large extent with drugs. I don't know anyone who has a problem with that (I don't know any Christian Scientists). So what's the problem with him taking drugs which allow him to take that recovery to its logical conclusion?
And don't be whining to me about the competition. They should all be allowed to take whatever. Because the whole original idea behind anti-dope rules and laws was to make the competition "fair".
Let's talk about that piece of malarkey. I'm 5'8" tall, have broad shoulders (wider than a coach airplane seat) and a lot of upper body strength just from the way I'm built. I probably could have become a weight lifter, a judo champ or maybe a baseball slugger. Maybe. But what drug can I take to become a basketball star? Or a track star? Or an NFL starter? Because, you see, the drugs don't make the athlete, they merely make the athlete better at what he can already do. You have to start off with the basic physique for your chosen sport. Few people make it to a professional team in any sport without that. And many who do have that, don't make it because they don't have the instincts needed to go along with the physique. Drugs can help that a little, but it does no good for a baseball player to take steroids if he can't hit the ball.
Moving right along, how about other drugs - pot, crack, meth, etc.? Well, those are performance-killing drugs, and over time the athlete taking them will no longer be able to function at a pro-sports level. Except, maybe, for pot. The jury is still out on that. Maybe when Timmy writes his memoirs we'll find out.
The day she died the neighbors Came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen,
She was the happiest... corpse... I'd ever seen.
-Cabaret