What are the real downsides of eliminating drug laws from professional sports?

Right on. And as a 50+ er, I just want to feel young again, and extend my life, and run under 5:00, or 6:00, or even 7:00.

thejeff wrote:

Let me be clear: I don't want drugs in sports. I strongly believe that amateur sports should be clean, and I 99.9% believe that professional sports should be clean as well.

However, there is 0.1% of me that longs to see a bunch of 'roided up gladiators crushing each other on the football field and running 8.73 100m dashes and hurling the shot 111 feet.

There would be danger to the athletes themselves, but sports are already dangerous, right? Bones break, ligaments tear... besides, we need to be bigger, faster, and stronger as a species by the time the aliens find us, right?

First, what are "amateur" sports? I am just looking for a delineation here. High school sports?

A danger would be that you would have to put your health at risk to compete as many of these substances have negative long term effects (or we do not know in the doses people take for performance enhancement).

Also, the competition is then not between the athletes on the field but the chemists in the labs. It would be like the robot contests in my mind. The robot is not the star, the programmers are.

Amateur: not paid to compete. College is amateur, too. (When I say professional, I really mean that people are at least trying to make a living playing the sport.)

Mostly agree here; health is a reasonable objection...until you consider that may drugs could actually help the athletes HEAL faster, too...

Not buying the last part of your argument. The chemist would be just another coach. Tell me Tom Brady's QB coach's name. Tell me Usain Bolt's strength coach's name. The athlete on the field/track/pool/pitch will always be the star.

Reboot runner wrote:

Right on. And as a 50+ er, I just want to feel young again, and extend my life, and run under 5:00, or 6:00, or even 7:00.

Exactly. There is so much to gain from hormone therapy by our 50+ers, both in athletics as well as everyday quality of life

Thejeff has it right, the gynecologist or endocrinologist turned uncontrolled human experimenter becomes the most important person in the sport.

In most countries there are no meaningful anti-doping laws. You can thank the IOC for keeping "sports free from politics."

thejeff wrote:

Amateur: not paid to compete. College is amateur, too. (When I say professional, I really mean that people are at least trying to make a living playing the sport.).

I don't think there's anything amateur about division 1 sports. The revenue generating sports are big business, even if the athletes aren't getting paid. Even non-revenue generating sports can hang scholarships over athletes to get near full time, job-like commitments.

I think the tough thing with PEDs is that it creates an atmosphere where it has to be done to compete when left to run rampant. Look at cycling. The underlying theme in most rider's books afterward, is that they are slowly brought into use once they show potential (and once, I assume, they are identified as being willing to play along - which they already have a feeling they have to if they want to stick around).

Once PEDs are pervasive enough in any sport, it starts to change the frame of reference of each sport for the fans/media, further promoting use. Does 40 HRs still move the needle today? Would you go back to watching football with the size of all players 15, 20 or 25% smaller? In another thread, people complained about the boring TDF. Could it be the bar was set in previous years with constant attacking in the mountains and now you are seeing riders unable to do it, short of a couple of instances. In the case of football, where their fan base really seems to not care if players dope, there is a real possibility you are going to see someone really hurt, if not killed on the field with the increase in size/speed. We are starting to see some of the players from the 70s and 80s have some real problems later in life. Imagine what happens when today's players reach those ages.

I think we have to fight PED use, even though it may seem like (or is) a losing battle.

The biggest problem with legalizing PEDs is the Pandora's box problem. Right now, PEDs are all drugs that are borrowed from medicine that coincidentally enhance performance. If you legalize PEDs, drug makers will get to work developing super steroids, EPO, HGH and other drugs to maximize athletic performance instead of healing illness and treating medical conditions. The result will be some pretty Joseph Mengele looking sh%t.

Precious Roy wrote:

The biggest problem with legalizing PEDs is the Pandora's box problem. Right now, PEDs are all drugs that are borrowed from medicine that coincidentally enhance performance. If you legalize PEDs, drug makers will get to work developing super steroids, EPO, HGH and other drugs to maximize athletic performance instead of healing illness and treating medical conditions. The result will be some pretty Joseph Mengele looking sh%t.

I agree on all counts.

Counterpoint: If legalized, pharms could make safer, specified drugs with fewer side effects (like you said, right now the PE part IS the side effect...)

Thejeff wrote:

I agree on all counts.

Counterpoint: If legalized, pharms could make safer, specified drugs with fewer side effects (like you said, right now the PE part IS the side effect...)

I agree as well. However, the PEDs are already safer and better and get better.

It's tough to define "safe" though. If someone is on a PED program for years, then dies relatively young like so many WWE wrestlers, was it the PEDs? Did Armstrong get cancer from so much HGH/Test/Who-knows-what? We know the new useful peptides have carcinogenic tendencies. There's no way to say convincingly one way or the other.

Which, is why it's easier to not permit them. If it's supposed to be a sport defined as a contest between two humans, then yeah, you should carefully restrict PEDs. Too bad that's not what is happening.

What are the real downsides of talking endless pseudoscientific BS about so called 'PEDs' as though you are some kind of expert?

Why there are none. Feel free to spout endless rhetoric and nonsense.

thejeff wrote:

However, there is 0.1% of me that longs to see a bunch of 'roided up gladiators crushing each other on the football field and running 8.73 100m dashes and hurling the shot 111 feet.

We've had it already, with Koch and Kratochvilova. The experiments of 35-40 years ago pushed the boundaries as far as they could be pushed.

For the 'roided up gladiators, you have wrestling and gridiron.

thejeff wrote:

Let me be clear: I don't want drugs in sports. I strongly believe that amateur sports should be clean, and I 99.9% believe that professional sports should be clean as well.

However, there is 0.1% of me that longs to see a bunch of 'roided up gladiators crushing each other on the football field and running 8.73 100m dashes and hurling the shot 111 feet.

There would be danger to the athletes themselves, but sports are already dangerous, right? Bones break, ligaments tear... besides, we need to be bigger, faster, and stronger as a species by the time the aliens find us, right?

Your'e living in fantasy if you think the NFL guys are not drugged to the gills and the current 100m mark is clean.

cleans wrote:

thejeff wrote:

However, there is 0.1% of me that longs to see a bunch of 'roided up gladiators crushing each other on the football field and running 8.73 100m dashes and hurling the shot 111 feet.

We've had it already, with Koch and Kratochvilova. The experiments of 35-40 years ago pushed the boundaries as far as they could be pushed.

For the 'roided up gladiators, you have wrestling and gridiron.

This is what I want to see. I want sub 12;30 5000m, sub 26 10000m, sub 2 full thon. I don't care about elite PED use, I want records and blazing fast races.

I want to see FULL HUMAN POTENTIAL.

It would suck to know that you got beat by a better pharmacist and not by a better athlete.

It would also suck to have to tell your children that to succeed they need hard work, talent, etc, and a good pharmacist.

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

It would suck to know that you got beat by a better pharmacist and not by a better athlete.

It would also suck to have to tell your children that to succeed they need hard work, talent, etc, and a good pharmacist.

It would suck to tell your kids they have no chance against superior African genetics and lifestyle. PEDS could help level the playing field for the hard working blue collar athletes against genetically gifted freaks.

cleans wrote:

thejeff wrote:

However, there is 0.1% of me that longs to see a bunch of 'roided up gladiators crushing each other on the football field and running 8.73 100m dashes and hurling the shot 111 feet.

We've had it already, with Koch and Kratochvilova. The experiments of 35-40 years ago pushed the boundaries as far as they could be pushed.

For the 'roided up gladiators, you have wrestling and gridiron.

I also understand that everything that will be invented has already been invented.

Balance the Feeld wrote:

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

It would suck to know that you got beat by a better pharmacist and not by a better athlete.

It would also suck to have to tell your children that to succeed they need hard work, talent, etc, and a good pharmacist.

It would suck to tell your kids they have no chance against superior African genetics and lifestyle. PEDS could help level the playing field for the hard working blue collar athletes against genetically gifted freaks.

Two excellent points. It would be interesting to see whether there would be a level of diminishing return or if we could turn the already genetic freaks into something truly superhuman.

thejeff wrote:

What are the real downsides of eliminating drug laws from professional sports?

A freak show from hell!

Females turning into males because of steroid abuse

Chemical experiments on adults with little regard for safety (do you think Russian and Chinese coaches give a sh!t about the long-term side effects of abusing drugs?)

Athletes injecting themselves with a number of drugs just before the start of the event

For every one athlete using PEDs intelligently, there will be hundreds abusing the hell out of PEDs

Copycat teenagers doping like their heroes

How the hell are you going to ensure everyone is using safe levels of steroids, EPO etc.? It cannot be done!

If athletes want to take PEDs, then they are free to set up their own independent organisations that advertise the fact that they do no drug testing.

The question is why don’t they?

An article on the issue: https://sports.vice.com/en_uk/article/the-drugs-won-the-case-for-ending-the-sports-war-on-doping