Drugs in Sport
This is a bit out of the ordinary for this blawg, but I had to comment after reading one of the comments on the Becker-Posner blog about drugs in sports, "The most vivid picture in my memory of doped athletic performance involved Carl Lewis' expression as Ben Johnson crossed the finish line in that summer olympics 100m some years ago. Lewis, who had competed against Johnson on numerous occasions, seemed to look at Johnson in total disbelief." Lewis looked on in total disbelief because he wondered why Johnson, the Canadian, had access to better drugs than Lewis did.
Becker makes three points, in defending doping tests in sports.
- Winning in sports is largely about relative differentials between competitors.
- Sports competitors need some solution to the "arms race" which doping engenders.
- And in any event, we need to prevent young athletes from these dangerous drugs.
Premise 1 is false or irrelevant and the conclusion simply doesn't follow. We shouldn't care about how athletes acquire their skills, whether it is because of genetic endowment, training, or a scientific mix of the two. We care about how what the results look like from an entertainment point of view. And if doping provides better entertainment, then very little else matters for these games.
We do have committees regulating sports equipment, rules, and other parts of the game- but this is for mainly one reason, the entertainment aspect. It should not be a surprise the best marketed sport, the NFL, has a rules committee which tweaks the game each year.
Would anyone stand for a ban on drugs which made individuals smarter? Of course not, so why do we care about banning drugs which make individual performances more spectacular? The doping ban was a mistake in early 70's, what was required was more disclosure about what individuals where using so that medical knowledge could be made available to all.
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