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Originally Posted by Bonedwarf
I'm with Wolf on this. These are PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES. They are not called PROFESSIONAL DRUG USERS. Taking the stage as a professional athlete, IMO, carries with it certain obligations and responsibilities to those who pay to see you. The guy who walks up to bat and then hits it out of the park. Those who have paid his wages should rightfully expect it to be a display of his athletic prowess. Not the prowess of a guy in a lab.
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I don't expect the guy at the gas station to be drug free. Hell, to be quite honest, having been a pump jockey myself in the past, I'd be amazed if they were drug free. (Even I can't make the claim, though only weed. Never anything stronger, despite my co-workers best efforts offering me E, acid etc...)
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Is the "pump jockey" a professional drug user? If not, why would a professional athlete become a professional drug user? Either they both are, or neither are.
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Whether steroids were illegal or not at the time is beside the point IMO. It's common sense that receiving a medicinal advantage to perform better in a paid sporting endeavour is both wrong and unethical.
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Anything that can be demonstrated to be a "performance enhancer" that was not at least disclosed before the competition, is certainly unfair and unethical. There is a presumption that you are competing on the same level. If they were all using the same performance enhancers, though, then the playing field would continue to be level.
When it comes to ethics and integrity, it doesn't mean that everybody plays by the same rules regardless of what they are doing. It means that you aren't trying to take shortcuts through the rules of whatever you are doing. My point is that we shouldn't accept lower ethical standards in any walk of life, or hold others to a higher one. We should expect all people to have integrity and ethics regardless of their role in life.