Speed and Violating the Law: The Reality of Athletes and Drug Enforcement

If anyone has been under a rock for the past 2 days, Barry Bonds has tested positive for amphetamines. When the news first came out, Bonds asserted that he got a product from Mike Sweeney, his teammate that have had some of the same components shared with amphetamines.

I left a post on another site about this same topic, and in my heart of hearts, if drug use in sports really wanted to be stopped, it would have been done long, long ago. If baseball, much less any other sport wanted to stop illicit use of drugs, then Bug Selig and others in position of authority would have the gumption to style the drug testing program held by the Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has railed against baseball’s testing, and I agree with their standpoint. If baseball really wanted to stop the illegal drug use once and for all, they would not curb into the Players’ Association and just add testing for HGH and whatever else.

Someone remind me, how long has amphetamine use been in sports, most especially baseball?

Folks, all this is all to pacify those with the pitchforks, and not because some executive decided to wake up one day and care.

However, if a system is not in place to stop drug use, then why would one stop doing so?

The answer is simple: Money and power. Now, if fans were really that upset over drug use, they'd stay away and demand changes to occur. We still pay X amounts of dollars to see our heroes play & we’ll go to the ends of the earth to get an autograph and get close to our favorite athletes.

I opine if Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmeiro are using performance enhancing drugs, then some of fringe and every day players have to be doing it.

Human beings will do they need to get ahead, and athletes are no exception. Cheating has been going on since the beginning of time and we live in a culture that actually rewards infamy.

We are all that surprised that cheating still goes on, and is widely accepted?

To be quite honest, a friend and fellow blogger told harked back to when Charles Barkley asserted, “athletes are not role models, parents should be”.

I have now stopped looking at athletes are role models as heroes or icons, & instead I look at them as entertainers. I see athletes today like wrestlers, who have a persona that may or may not be real, but I look at them as what they are – human beings paid to play a kid’s sport and do it the best they can.

I’d love for sports to be clean, and for every athlete to have the social consciousness of a Muhammad Ali or a Carlos Delgado, but the money involved and the adulation is just too much for one to resist heading to the dark side.

When we stop having a Pollyannaish view of athletes, we can further understand the drug debate and why humans give into tempatation.