"Steroids don't make great athletes, they destroy them" This is the slogan for a commercial I see on MLB network and ESPN every so often.
Steroids are bad for your health, but it's just not clear to me that they can't make great athletes. Of course, it all hangs on what you mean by "great" and "athlete" (or "destroy" for that matter") but Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark mcGwire, Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Sammy Sosa, Shawne Merriman, Alex Rodriguez, and other known steroid users were great athletes. Arguably steroids made them great (though Bonds, Clemens, and Jones were certainly great pre-steroids). What "destroyed" them was persecution for steroid use. This may well be legitimate persecution, but most of these athletes were good to great LATE in their careers. Of course, there are many steroid related deaths, particularly in football and wrestling, but could we assume that this is a result of misuse? Some athletes have access to better doctors and trainers who have found ways to minimize the risks of steroid use?
Is it so hard to say: "Steroids frequently cause health problems, don't gamble on them" Do we have to say that they destroy great athletes?
Maybe the assault on drugs has made me more sensitive than I should be about these things, but there seems to be a desire to misinform the public rather than educate it. Whether the drugs is heroin, marijuana, or steroids, the tactic is to try and scare rather than to present facts in a clear way. Granted statistics are contestable and in many cases because of the illegality, there are very few reliable statistics, but a lot of these messages are clearly false. And false messages can create cynicism and a feeling that steroids are in act less dangerous than they are.
