Your own body? - drug use by athletes

ONCE UPON A TIME athletesstarted the day with Wheaties. Now they take stanozolol, with a little probenecid to mask it. Or maybe they snort coke, depending on whether they're trying to enhance performance or willing to impair it. Either way, they cheat the public and debase sport.

When Ben Johnson lost the Olympic gold medal, we were reminded again how commonplace drug abuse has become in big-time sports. The previous reminder had been New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor's less-than-Draconian thirty-day suspension for an apparent relapse into his cocaine habit. It seemed perfectly in character for the NFL to offer to save Johnson from the ruin he'd earned, asking him, through one of his several agents, if he had any interest in a football career.

The drug epidemic can be laid to many things, but it owes some of its magnitude to the New Morality, whose central tenet is that what you do to your own body is strictly your own business. This idea presupposes drug consumption (or sexual activity, as the case may be) occurring under something like laboratory conditions-responsible adults conducting carefully monitored experiments on themselves in careful isolation from everyone else.

Of course, it doesn't work that way. These things have a contagious aspect, through both friendly peer pressure and less friendly competitive pressure. Johnson's willingness to sacrifice his long-term health for immediate victory could have induced other runners to make the same self-destructive choice. His disgrace will help protect all athletes, and the IOC deserves praise for inflicting it so decisively. If only other sports bodies would follow suit.