The Big Steroids Bust

Still, while China is certainly culpable of many sins in this matter, it is the United States that is complicit, a massive market for the competitive advantage—or even just the pop-up pecs and abs—that performance-enhancing drugs can provide. And pro sports have been responsible for the continued expansion of that market, making performance-enhancing drugs almost a requirement for some to compete at the highest level.

It is long past time for our pro sports leagues and their unions to stop hiding behind phony excuses, diversionary bluster and privacy concerns. It is galling to listen to leagues like the NFL talk about the money they have invested in trying to develop a urine test for HGH because the league believes a blood test—of people playing America's bloodiest, most violent sport—is too intrusive for the players. It's galling when a man of the stature and integrity of Gary Player calls out the PGA Tour, saying he has direct knowledge of steroid use, and golf winds up pointing the finger at him as if it is his responsibility rather than the sport's to clean up its problem. And baseball has been appalling as, at least in the fans' eyes, it has become the centerpiece of the problem.

Pushing testing to the limits is the first requisite. The second is making the punishments severe enough that the risk/reward ratio is daunting. When Athens 100-meter Olympic champ Justin Gatlin tested positive for testosterone last year, his second doping offense, the 24-year-old sprinter was banned from competition for eight years. While that may be reduced at some point on appeal, it is essentially a career ender. I can't tell you track and field has licked all its problems, but if you take a look at some of the winning throws in weight events in recent world competitions, they are nowhere near the marks of the drug-rampant '80s. There is bite in the punishments now.

Baseball has at least moved in the right direction by boosting its suspension for a first offense to 50 games. Still, why doesn't a second offense, given how ineffectual and noncomprehensive the testing is in the first place, carry a lifetime ban? Why four games for a first offense in the NFL and a season for the second? Four games is the equivalent of a mild hamstring problem. If using HGH hastened Rodney Harrison's return from multiple injuries, then a four-game suspension is actually a good deal for him, given that the alternative might have been not recovering quickly enough to return to action.

It has been a long journey in the battle against sports doping: from denial to obfuscation to tokenism, and, finally, to where there are minimally acceptable programs that, while still inadequate, can be defended with a straight face. But it is past time to make the next and biggest leap: to a two-pronged approach that avails itself of the cutting edge of testing technology while punishing the cheats harshly. We Americans excel at pointing the fingers at other countries. But it is America that is at the heart of the problem.

© 2007