I heard from a friend in the news biz today, and the tone of his letter suggested that I was a softie on drug-users in sport, if such users happen to be friends of mine. I have been considering how best to express my feelings about drugs. I don't think I'm a softie. Maybe my news buddy kick-started me into writing my impressions down, and upon reading them maybe his impression of me--at least on this issue--will change.

This has been brewing in me since a SlowTwitch interview, where Erin Baker said, "On drugs, I think it should be open 'slather'... I guess if athletes want to pump themselves full of crap then it's their own personal decision." Her statement grew on me. There is a certain egalitarianism to it. Please let me explain.

My life is roughly half over at 42 years old. In my fight to get my old fitness back I have so much trouble with my knees, my back, my tendons, I truly can't yet tell how much fitness I've lost through age. And I think about what it must be like for the person my age who's taken anabolic steroids and human growth hormone during the last two decades of his life. I don't want to spew anti-drug scare tactics 1950s style: Marijuana will eventually lead to heroin... and death.

But I do hear about misshapen joints; haywire metabolism; arthritis: The great irony of the body he now has to contend with versus the body he was so desperate to sculpt while younger. This doesn't describe all former drug-takers, of course. But it describes a lot of the ones--so I hear--who are fortunate enough to still be alive.

Steroids and growth hormones make our cells grow. All our cells. Including our cancer cells, which everybody has, all the time. But our bodies, when functioning properly, destroy them most of the time. When those cells get extra pharmaceutical help they grow and grow. In the space of time it might take a small lump to become noticeable in you or me, the cancer may have spread throughout the whole body of somebody on steroids and/or HgH.

There is a different mechanism for those taking EPO. I think of the athletes who competed in this year's Ironman, and I wonder if any of them were so "enriched." What is it like to be on the last half of the run and to wonder, as everyone else in the race is trying to make it to the next aid station alive?" I think this is a fair question, or at least is should be. It is well known by any Ironman veteran that the big problem is not that you aren't drinking enough, but that you aren't absorbing what you're drinking. That's bad enough when you're not pumped to the brim with red blood cells. But what about when your blood is so thick, and you're running mile after mile, sweating out your fluids, and it's so hot, so humid, and you can feel the water just sloshing in your stomach, unabsorbed? And just when you should be concentrating on your race, and overcoming your pain, and keeping up your tempo, you are wondering if you are going to drop dead at any moment.

Such an athlete might rationalize this, and say, "Only a couple of dozen cyclists have died from EPO, I've got a good doctor, the chances are slim anything like that will happen to me." But cycling is different from the Ironman. How many cyclists lose control of their bodily functions, total collapse, fall off their bikes, or lose control and steer off the road? That loss of bodily control has happened to many of the world's best athletes in the Ironman, not to mention GI tract surgeries performed immediately after the race: Two that I know of (my wife JulieAnne White, and Chris Legh). This race causes exhaustion and dehydration like exists in no other race on earth. More IV's are pumped into arms under one tent on the Kona Pier than any other single room in the world in a twelve hour period, excluding during natural disasters. This isn't the Tour de France. Physiologically, it's much worse. This race, in this place, is uncharted territory for the EPO-user. Such an athlete just doesn't know, and neither does his doctor.

But the athlete may make it to the finish intact, placing third instead of fifth, or seventh instead of ninth. He made it. But then, he might just die quietly in his sleep, the night following the race, as is often the case with EPO deaths. No one knows why.

Did I mention I'm 42? That's older than any pro athlete now racing. I look forward to getting into top shape, and keeping my fitness until I'm 62. Or 82. I hope that more of my life is in front of me than is behind me. I'm glad knowing that I haven't helped along cancer, arthritis, and whatever else is out there gunning for me. But what about that fellow my age, who raced against me when we were both in our twenties, and who took performance enhancing drugs? He hopefully has 40 or 50 years left himself. But what he might have taken isn't going to enhance his performance now.

I'm glad about one other thing. When I'm 50, or 60, and on through the rest of my life, as my sense of honor matures, I know I'll not be embarassed and disappointed looking back and knowing I cheated. I think about those who're taking banned drugs now. Most of them are kids, really. They're caught in the moment. One day they'll be fathers of sons and daughters who'll grow up and look for guidance. They'll be grandfathers and grandmothers, and they'll look back on this dark blotch in their lives. Like the old soldier who anonymously hid from battle, this is their dishonorable secret they can never tell. They've fooled everyone. But they will not have fooled themselves.

I don't know if this is all that Erin Baker was thinking when she said those words. But she obviously got me thinking. I don't believe I'm soft on any of my friends who might be taking drugs. It's true I'm ambivalent about drug testing. I hate cheaters getting away with it, but I know it's happening and I don't know what the answer is. I also know there are things worse than getting caught.

I don't harbor any hopes that this monologue will save even one soul because I'm a bit more harsh on the subject than any governing bodies. A little part of me--maybe not so little--takes a pleasure in the prospect of forty years of arthritis as a payoff for cheating. I hate cheaters. Taking drugs is, to me, the same as cutting the course, or sabotaging a competitor's equipment. A two-year ban doesn't quite assuage the offense to my sense of fair play. So I hope my journalistic friend understands why, for me, Erin Baker's statement resonates, that there is a sense of cosmic equivalence to it all.

---

Another view:

The debate continues to rage throughout the sporting community, the legislature and all bodies related to the administration of international sport. The burning question? "Are you on drugs?"

It occurs to me that the focus of the debate on this topic represents far more clearly where we are as a culture than does the obviously prevalent use of performance enhancing substances. What I mean by this is that the central themes seem to be issues of interdiction, enforcement and punishment. Where in all of this discussion is the concept of individual responsibility for and to a system which regards individual honor and integrity as the end, rather than money and status? The same place this ethical discussion exists in our homes, schools and communities, I fear.

We contend that if properly caught and punished, athletes will mend their ways and others will be deterred from following suit and that is the solution to the problem. First, there is no evidence that this approach has any effect at all. Witness over 2.5 million Americans alone incarcerated for drug related crimes. Second, who in the existing process is in a position to develop or implement policy without prejudice?

As to the issue of deterrence, this is a convenient and cost effective political sop, hardly a solution. Inherent in a viable solution is evidence of at least the possibility of success. In the case of drugs and athletes there is no evidence to support that this approach can work, has worked, or ever will work. However it is a nice plank to trot out when, say, a few dozen cyclists either die or are arrested. It is not a solution, it is a sound bite.

As to the issue of prejudice: The de facto objective of international sporting bodies is to stage successful events which can be viewed by the world and consequently subsidized by corporate sponsors. Audits have proven time and again that a disproportionate amount of this revenue goes to funding the activities of the federations, activities which historically are rarely in the best interest of the athletes who are the dogs and ponies in this show. A successful event has the best athletes on stage, competing at their optimum level. Now, the bodies in charge of making sure athletes don't use drugs to perform at their highest level are also the same bodies whose very existence depends on staging events with the best athletes in the world present, prepared to perform at their optimum level. Does the phrase "We've left the chimps in charge of the bananas," seem appropriate here?

OK, so we have a system of deterrence which cannot work administered by bodies who cannot even give the appearance of impartiality. What do we do?

One option would be to dismantle all testing and enforcement and let the athletes use the doctor and drug of their choice. The advantages to this approach are legion. All of the money used in the futile detection and prosecution of athletes could be used towards development and education, arguably a much better use of this money. For the athletes it would remove the guessing and rumor-mongering so prevalent in locker rooms and airline terminals. For television it would have two benefits. The first would be no more late announcements and shuffling of results tarnishing the outcome of events. Second, the level of competition would leap almost immediately. One other side benefit would be the protection of the athletes. In an open system, athletes would get the best information from the best resources regarding what they would be putting into their bodies.

Another option and one not so easily implemented is to admit to ourselves that as a society we have failed miserably in raising our children in and around athletics...