Should Doping Be Legal? - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The ...

by Patrick Appel

Yascha Mounk makes a distinction between "drugs that pose significant health risks even when taken under medical supervision" and "all other substances ? like erythropoietin (EPO) and propranolol, for example":

Anti-doping rules are meant to end the use of ?performance-enhancing substances.? But that rationale makes little sense. Human beings need copious food and drink to survive, let alone run a marathon. Strictly speaking, we all ingest performance-enhancing substances all the time. Our decision about whether or not to ban a particular substance thus doesn?t depend on whether it will boost athletic performance; it depends on how ?normal? ? in the sense of either natural or common ? we think it is.

Margaret Goodman has a different view:

I think that athletes, as a whole, wish to compete clean. The reality is that too often peer pressure wins out. Ultimately, the solution is threefold: educate athletes and the public that athletic prowess can be accomplished through competing clean; understand that ?bigger, faster, stronger? contributes to injuries, shorter careers and debilitating retirement; and expand comprehensive, aggressive state-of-the-art testing.

Source: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/should-doping-be-legal.html

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