Drugs and Sports | Introduction
One of the most exciting sports stories in recent years was the attempt to break Roger Maris’s single-season home run record in baseball. On September 8, 1998, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals made history by hitting his sixty-second home run. The popular McGwire, who finished the season with seventy home runs, was widely celebrated for his feat.
However, many people believe that McGwire’s achievement was tarnished by a revelation some weeks earlier that he had been using androstenedione, a compound that temporarily boosts levels of the male sex hormone testosterone. “Andro” is believed by some to promote muscle buildup and recovery; McGwire had taken it as part of his power lifting exercise regimen. It is legal to buy androstenedione as a “dietary supplement” in the United States, although many medical experts believe it is essentially similar to artificial forms of testosterone (steroids) that are illegal in the United States without a doctor’s prescription. Androstenedione is banned by many sports organizations outside of baseball including the National Football League (NFL) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Despite the fact that McGwire’s actions were legal and within the rules of Major League Baseball, many sports observers were dismayed. “In raising his testosterone to reach Maris’s record,” wrote syndicated columnist Derrick Z. Jackson, “McGwire has lowered the values of his sport. No longer is it the best man who wins. It is the best-enhanced man.” (In August 1999, McGwire announced that he had stopped using the substance. He hit sixty-five home runs in the 1999 season.)
McGwire was not the first—or the last—high profile athlete to take so-called performance-enhancing drugs. In 1998 alone several significant drug scandals shook the sports world. Irish swimmer Michelle de Bruin, winner of three gold medals in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, was banned from swimming competitions after submitting a suspicious urine sample to drug testers. American shotputter Randy Barnes, an Olympic gold medalist, was banned for life from competition for using the same supplement that McGwire used. On the eve of the World Swimming Championships held that year in Australia, Yuan Yuan, a star Chinese swimmer, was arrested at the Sydney airport with thirteen vials of human growth hormone in her possession (enough for the entire team)—a development that seemingly confirmed widespread suspicions that the past success of Chinese women athletes in swimming and other sports was due to drugs. The 1998 Tour de France bicycle race almost collapsed when numerous competitors, including many top teams, were disqualified amid credible allegations that cyclists were systematically using drugs as part of their training regimens.
Taking performance-enhancing drugs, or “doping,” has a long history in sport. In 1904, a marathon runner nearly died from a mixture of brandy and strychnine, a poisonous substance that in small quantities acts as a stimulant. Amphetamines replaced strychnine as the stimulant of choice among athletes in the 1930s. In the 1950s, responding to news that Soviet Union weight lifters were being given hormones to increase their strength, physician John Ziegler invented a synthetic substitute—anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids quickly became popular among athletes, including NFL players, seeking greater muscle growth and strength. From the 1950s through the 1980s, drugs were part of the sports and athletic programs of the Soviet Union and its political allies such as East Germany. Recent investigations have revealed the extent to which many athletes in East Germany and other countries were given steroids and other drugs, sometimes without the athletes’ knowledge. The apparent goal for individual countries was to win national glory through victory in sports. Some people believe similar programs currently exist in China. But today, when an Olympic gold medal can mean millions in endorsement dollars, “Doping knows no ideological or geographical boundaries,” writes journalist Jason Zengerle, who estimates that more than 30 percent of Olympic athletes use performance drugs.
Some sports events and organizations have banned the use of certain drugs and have implemented programs to test for such substances. The IOC was one of the first organizations to do so. After cyclists believed to be taking amphetamines collapsed and died at the 1960 Olympics and the 1967 Tour de France (not an Olympic event), the IOC established a medical commission and developed a list of banned substances. It began drug testing of contestants at the 1968 Olympic Games. Since then the IOC has continually expanded the list of forbidden substances, which include stimulants, narcotics, steroids, and masking agents (substances meant to hide banned drug use from urine drug tests).
Perhaps the most famous Olympic drug test came after the 100-meter dash at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Canadian/Jamaican sprinter Ben Johnson set a world record of 9.79 seconds, but had his gold medal stripped from him when he tested positive for anabolic steroids. Johnson eventually was banned for life from track and field competition. But many believe that Johnson was not the only athlete to abuse drugs. Robert Voy, chief medical officer of the United States Olympic Committee from 1985 to 1989, concluded that “the only thing that separated Johnson from a great number of others who competed in Seoul in a vast variety of sports is simple: He got caught.”
In 2000 the IOC helped establish a new World Anti-Doping Agency to coordinate international drug testing efforts in preparation for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. But many have questioned the IOC’s commitment against drugs. Some observers have even accused the IOC of concealing positive drug results in past Olympics. The IOC has resisted calls for using blood samples instead of urine samples, for example, or to mandate frequent out-of-competition drug testing. Critics of the IOC argue that it is too wary of alienating corporate sponsors or jeopardizing its ability to market the Olympics if the true extent of athletic drug use were to be revealed. Speaking of the negative public relations fallout from the Ben Johnson incident, health professor and steroids expert Charles Yesalis asserted in a 1999 Newsweek article that the IOC “will never let something like that be made public again. . . . Superstars could have drugs oozing out of their eyeballs and the IOC still wouldn’t call it.” Danish Sports Minis- ter Elsebeth Berner Nielsen stated in 1999 that “the IOC has proved that they don’t have the power or the will to take care of the fight against doping.” Many critics of the IOC have called for national governments and other international organizations to take a stronger lead in testing and punishing the use of performance drugs.
The effectiveness of testing has been questioned as well. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, there were only two confirmed positive drug tests. For some observers, these low numbers confirmed that athletes had become very successful in circumventing drug tests. Some athletes hide and submit false urine samples. Many use drugs as a training aid between competitions, then stop taking them long enough to test “clean” at the Olympics themselves. Some athletes are turning to substances that occur naturally in the human body, making detection of cheating even more difficult if not impossible. These newly developed substances include human growth hormone (hGH) and erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that increases oxygen flow to red blood cells. The suspected prevalence of drug use among athletes and the increased sophistication in avoiding positive test results has led to some serious examination of the issue of performanceenhancing drugs in sport. “At its root,” writes journalist Christopher P. Winner in USA Today, “the doping issue boils down to one hard question: Is it worth trying to keep sports pure by tracking down drug cheats when standards vary and more sophisticated methods make the use of performance- enhancing substances easier to conceal?”
Not all sports observers answer that question in the affirmative. Some argue that drug testing is futile as newer substances are invented and developed. Drug testing can be invasive or degrading, and can produce false positive results that unfairly tarnish an athlete’s reputation. Drug regulations are also confusing in that many banned substances may be taken, in some cases inadvertently, through common over-the-counter medications. Moreover, some observers such as medical ethicist Norman Fost argue that athletes should have the right to control what goes into their own bodies. Taking certain drugs to improve one’s athletic performance, in this view, differs little in principle from the high altitude training, special diets, and grueling exercise regimens that are commonplace in sports, even though many people outside athletic circles would find these actions “unnatural.” Fost and others note that people in other professions often take chemical substances (such as the caffeine in coffee) in order to boost their performance in their vocations, and ask why athletes should be treated differently.
Those who believe athletes should be held to a drug-free standard offer several reasons. Some argue that taking drugs is simply a form of cheating that should not be allowed. Others argue that drug use and suspicion of drug use threaten the enjoyment many people receive from watching athletes compete. “One of the biggest problems with sports today,” writes tennis and sports writer Christopher Clarey, “is that whenever someone does something remarkable—sets a world record, runs through the pain, steps suddenly from the shadows into the light—it creates as much suspicion as it does sense of wonder.”
Concern for the health of athletes is another reason many oppose drugs in sports. Many performance-enhancing drugs pose health risks. Stimulants can cause changes in heart rhythm and increase blood pres- sure. Anabolic steroids are linked with liver and heart disorders, psychiatric disturbances, and reduced fertility. They also are blamed for masculinizing effects on women. EPO has been blamed for sudden deaths through blood circulatory failure. Extended use of human growth hormone may cause diabetes, arthritis, or cancer.
Those who worry about health risks argue that many athletes do not really have much of a free choice whether or not to be drug free if cheaters win and typically go uncaught and unpunished. Athletes then are confronted with the dilemma of having to take drugs themselves to give themselves a fighting chance at competing. For athletes who train for years to gain a shot at an Olympic medal or other athletic goal, this can be a difficult choice, although surveys of elite athletes suggest that many would find the temptation difficult to overcome.
The issue of drugs in sports affects more than just elite athletes and their fans. Successful athletes are also seen as role models for the young, many argue, and their actions may have the effect of increasing drug abuse among young people. For example, sales of androstenedione have surged more than 1000 percent since McGwire first admitted to using it, according to industry sources—and much of that increase was attributable to purchases by young people. Some experts have argued that steroid use has doubled among high school athletes over the course of the 1990s and estimate that 18 percent of high school athletes use anabolic steroids.
Whether or not the use of performance-enhancing drugs is something that can ever be fully stopped is one of the issues discussed in At Issue: Drugs and Sports. The authors discuss drug use among Olympic, professional, high school, and college athletes, the ethics of doping, and what steps can possibly be taken to prevent it.
