Major League Baseball recently announced the suspension of “about 20 players” for their connection to the performance-enhancing drug clinic Biogenesis. Update from a reader:
The MLB has not yet officially announced any suspensions, and the article you linked to references only leaked reports about potential upcoming suspensions. For a more in-depth discussion of the potential effect the suspensions may have on future labor relations you should check out this Grantland piece by Jonah Keri.
Pareene compares the MLB’s efforts to eliminate steroids to the war on drugs:
Years after BALCO, it looks as if just as many players are using. The league’s stricter enforcement has simply led to players getting more creative, and apparently relying on even less reliable sources. … Like the federal War on Drugs, enforcement is draconian and unequal (minor leaguers don’t get the protection and defense provided by the MLBPA). It is also occasionally incoherent: Marijuana use subjects players to suspensions and bans, though drunk driving doesn’t. There’s no concrete evidence that HGH does much for players beyond making them look really cut. At least Major League players have access, unlike your typical subject of the criminal justice system, to the best defense money can buy.
I’d say Alex is under-rating HGH, but his general point stands. Travis Waldron weighs in:
There exists … virtually no evidence that drug testing deters drug use.
Baseball doesn’t have records of drug use from before the testing era, so there isn’t any way to measure its efficacy. But the existence of tests and suspensions obviously hasn’t stopped Rodriguez, who admitted to steroid use in 2009, from associating with shady figures like Bosch, and it hasn’t stopped countless other players from using drugs either. Drug use is rampant in sports like cycling and the Olympics that have aggressive testing policies, and academic research has suggested that “testing alone is not a sufficient deterrent to eliminate drug use among college athletes.”
As for aggressive drug testing and busts of professionals serving as a deterrent for young athletes, Dr. Linn Goldberg testified in front of the House of Representatives in December that his two-year testing of high school athletes had no deterrent effect on their use of performance enhancing drugs. If drug testing young athletes doesn’t stop them from using drugs, should we really expect that drug testing professional athletes is going to stop young athletes from using drugs?
