Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The curious lack of drug testing in sports

I have been following these drug related stories about how the sports people are using performance enhancing drugs to boost their performance and thus creating or breaking record with almost impunity. It is disturbing to see that there have been an almost criminal reluctance on the part of the sports authorities to strictly enforce the laws banning the use of drugs. I know that they are trying hard to enforce the law (moral or otherwise) but for a long time, it was not on the agenda of the self policing sports authorities to ignore this drug problem and supposedly respectable people have come under the drug probe in not only baseball but also recently cycling. I also understand that the players are under tremendous pressure to show their performance and thus encourage this use. But the use of it is like cheating the fans of the sports. I believe that drug testing should be enforced in every sport and if there is a drug use than the players should be banned if not for life then for at least a longer period of time like maybe ten years or more and shamed for it. We will have to overcome our favorable bias towards treating sports players as heroes and treat them for what they are simple human beings who are susceptible to the temptations of these drugs to create records and money for their teams. If we can send ordinary people to jail for little illegal drug use, we should surely make a few go to jail for a little while to show that illegal drug use for enhancing performance will not be tolerated at all.

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