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TENNIS BLOG Tennis Articles Should we legalize performance-enhancing drugs in tennis/sports? | |
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| Should we legalize performance-enhancing drugs in tennis/sports? |
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| Aug 30, 2007 at 05:12 AM | ||||||||||
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In the last 25 years the challenges presented by performance enhancing drugs in sports and the inedequacy of the drug testing agencies to deal with it, has come to a point that even high ranked officials are venting their frustration. "Charles Yesalis, an epidemiology professor at Pennsylvania State University who has written extensively on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport over the past 23 years, believes a "large percentage" of record-holders probably doped their way to the finish line. "A lot of experts, at least in private, feel that way," he says." As Charles Yesalis, of the US. Anti-Doping Agency, I feel like saying "'Let everybody do whatever they want.'", but perhaps it would be the wrong signal, so let us analyse, what might happen if performance-enhancing drugs were legalized for professional athletes: - Young people would get the wrong message. - Our general anti drugs laws would not make any sense because; athletes are users and abusers of illegal drugs such as; Amphetamines, Diuretics, Growth hormone, Anabolic Steroids, Cocaine, Coca leaf juice, Cannabis even Monkey Brains and G.O.R.K. (God Only Really Knows)! - All drugs would have to be legalized! - We would have a quarter of the world taking speed, a quarter smoking cannabis another quarter snorting cocaine and the rest wondering what to take to look "Normal"! Kidding apart it would be a catastrophe! Or would it be? - The already existing sports fanatics and wanabe champion dysfunctional and destitute of any talent would start taking drugs in the hope it would work for them! (Even though it would not work, because you still need to be a pure bread/great athlete to win.) - Greedy parents would start pumping their children with all kinds of terrible things. (How naive am I, as if they were not doing it now?) - High school coaches of all sports would have a heyday!
Not that anyone needs a doctor. A 2005 study by monitoring the Future, a federally funded research organization, found that nearly 40 percent of high school seniors said steroids were "fairly easy" or "very easy" to acquire." Impact of steroids felt across high school sports C.W. Nevius Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - San Francisco Chronicle So if; At the Sydney Games, out of almost 3000 athletes tested, some 80 per cent of them admitted to taking at least one ‘legal’ drug or supplement. Over 500 admitted to taking more than five. It is clear that the ‘medicalisation’ of human performance, at least at the Olympics, means that sport could not, ironically, exist without drugs whether they are ‘legal’ or not." Drugs in sport - a bitter pill to swallow Fri, Dec 8, 06 16:15 ''No one wants to see me put the shot 65 feet or throw the discus 200 feet, and the only way I can make a big throw is to use steroids.'' He said the competition would still be legitimate because he said 80 percent to 90 percent of the athletes he would face were using steroids. VIEWS OF SPORT; Liberate Track and Field From Steroids VIEWS OF SPORT; By EDWIN MOSES http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=950DE0DE143BF932A25755C0A96F948260 Nicolas Escude former ATP player (Career High ATP Ranking - Singles: 17 (26-Jun-2000) at the French open 2002. In Paris, French Davis Cup player Escude said: "To say that tennis today is clean, you have to be living in a dream world." http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/wimbledon/2071804.stm By Piers Newbery - BBC Sport Online at Wimbledon Friday, 28 June, 2002, 17:05 GMT 18:05 UK Now the case for making it legal for professional athletes to take drugs: - If the estimate is that around the 80% of the Athletes use some sort of performance enhancing substance, there is a strong case for legalization! - Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for professional athletes only and above the age of 18 years old. - Laws should be made to protect non-professional athletes and youngsters - No Tolerance on use or abuse. - No tolerance for the use of performance enhancing drugs for non-professional until the age of 18 years old! - Doctors and Medicine Sports Centres should be responsible for the Athletes medication. - The Athletes and Doctors and labs should take full responsibility for their own decisions. - Coaches should stay completely out of the equation, the professionals on the field; Doctors, Scientists and Labs should be the only ones making decisions with the Athletes. There are a lot more issues, but to make this article shorter we have to understand that, the general public is well aware of what is going on and so do officials, sponsors and governments. There is to much money involved, billions and billions of dollars, we are no longer in the "Pierre de Coubertin" era. It is time for a change and everyone will feel better with the situation; the IOC, the governing bodies, the testing sites and the Athletes themselves. Why are we then continuing this charade? Keeping on saying that our sports are clean when in any given Olympic games more than 8O% of the Athletes are "sick" or asthmatic, or have liver, heart or lung problems in order to be prescribed "legal" (Illegal) drugs and compete! And when almost every week there is a report about drug use by professional Athletes! Remember in my last article I quoted - "SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- John McEnroe has reportedly admitted he unknowingly took steroids during his tennis career. "For six years I was unaware I was being given a form of steroid of the legal kind they used to give horses until they decided it was too strong even for horses," McEnroe was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney on Monday." http://www.cnn.com/2004/SPORT/01/11/mcenroe.steroids.ap/ - CNN WORLD SPORTS Sunday, January 11, 2004 Posted: 8:52 PM EST (0152 GMT) ...and the ATP, the ITF and whoever else tests the players did not detect "HORSE DOSES of Steroids" in John McEnroes urine or blood tests? Definitely, "They cannot be serious!" "In his book ''You Cannot Be Serious'', McEnroe said he suspected that steroids and amphetamines had made their way into the top levels of the sport in the 80's. " Why were steroids or amphetamines not detected on other players either, that is if players were tested at all? The excuse, "the tennis authorities were testing for recreational drugs only", oh!...and cocaine apparentely stays in your body for the rest of your life in the roots of your hair. How come cocaine was never detected in any of the possible suspected culprits in the Tennis Tour then? Or is this a case of the whole world being "stupid" and these organizations know better? We could go on and on citing more and more questionable actions by officialdom to no avail. The crux all of this is; "Should we legalize performance-enhancing drugs in tennis/sports?" As much as I hate to say it, to bring this absurd hypocritical charade to an end, my answer is a reduntant yes! Sergio Cruz UPDATE: Latest incident - May 18.05.2009 - RICHARD GASQUET Cocaine test star suspended. French tennis player Richard Gasquet has been suspended after a drugs test came up positive for traces of cocaine. http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/home/regularieninhalte/sports-ticker/sport/2009/05/12/richard-gasquet-suspended-after-positive-cocaine-test.html Update to Gasquet case: 23-07-2009 The charade continues, sad that high level officials are behind this ruling. Is there a way to believe that the ATP, ITF, WADA or anyone are serious about getting cheaters in tennis? It seems that there is too much money at stake and in the end the whole thing becomes just a real farse and a tragic comedy. Gasquet proved to the tribunal that he got cocaine in his body through kissing a contaminated girl in a nightclub!!! Ah!, ah!, ah!.... Ruling statement: "The tribunal accepted Mr Gasquet's plea of no significant fault or negligence, on the basis that he was able to demonstrate on the balance of probabilities how the cocaine entered his system (through inadvertent contamination in a nightclub the night before his scheduled match), and that, while he was at fault in exposing himself to the risk of such contamination, that fault was not significant," the statement added. Doped But Undetected SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Olympic gold medalist Antonio Pettigrew admitted publicly for the first time Thursday that he used performance-enhancing substances during a long, successful sprinting career in which he passed all drug tests. Murray and Nadal set for WADA fight 'Murray echoes Nadal's assertion that tennis has no big problem with drugs. But neither he nor Nadal had impacted on the senior game when Greg Rusedski was among dozens who failed a test for the steroid nandrolone six years ago. The ATP was said to have distributed contaminated electrolyte, and eventually Rusedski, along with several players in the world top 20, escaped censure. But not before WADA proved supplements and drinks had nothing to do with it. A two-year suspension would have been their lot had tennis then been a signatory to the WADA code. Doping was clearly rife and the ATP stance was no more than window dressing. They pointed to minimal adverse findings. In the year prior to Rusedski's positive, the International Tennis Federation conducted 1506 anti-doping controls. All but 77 of these were at tournaments. Not even the daftest crook lobs a brick through the jeweller's window under the eye of the Flying Squad. Richard Pound, then head of WADA, told The Herald in an exclusive interview that ATP handling of the affair was 'dead wrong, but we could do nothing about that, because they have not signed up to the WADA code.' At last they have, and players are squealing. They jeered ITF representatives when details were announced last month.' http://www.theherald.co.uk/sport/headlines/display.var.2487586.0.murray_and_nadal_set_for_wada_fight.php
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