[Osborn F Enready]

Where is the reasonable line on "performance enhancing products" in sports and national competition?


Today we are seeing huge divides in society over drug use, what to do about it, as well as how we deal with it as a society of law.

Performance enhancing drugs have been a pet issue of the media lately, as well as federal enforcement.

So, I am prompted to ask where this line on drugs came from, and how does it compare to other sports related items?

Shoes- Shoes have long been used as a "performance enhancer" by atheletes. Are the shoes today the same as the shoes worn in the first record setting days of the sports where we keep records and titles as holy grails of sports achievement? If not, why not? Can the shoes of today really be allowed if they give unfair advantage over athletes who set the original records using low-tech shoes, and if so, why and how does this compare to drugs in sports?

Food- Modern health food supplements, something I strongly beleive in. This is a new supplemental line of products specifically designed to allow athletes to fully control their bodily intake and exhaust of their biological engines, much like tuned port injection for an engine in your car. These supplements allow us as humans, and competitors, to do the absolute maximum our individual biological means will provide. How does this affect the validity of previous records in sports? How does this compare to performance enhancing drugs?

Am I the only one that sees the obvious answer here?

I think the obvious answer is that as a rule we champion the "performance enhancing" additions to our community and sports when they are available equally to all involved, and allowed to flourish based on their merit and value to the community. The answer in bodybuilding was to make a "natural competitors league" and a "standard league" leaving the door open to those who wished to use certain types of performance enhancing drugs, supplements and aides.

Why can't this be done with all sport, if our claimed reasoning is to protect the sanctity of the sport?

Why shouldn't individuals be allowed to push past their biological ability using drugs, as they are with other sports aides, gear, food?


I hope to see some reasonable debate on this issue, and I hope we can keep the obvious flames to a minimum, and keep debate reasonable and factually based.

I have underlined my major questions to draw out the logic used to build essential basis for positions on the argument from all sides. Please feel free to contribute to the debate, but please make an effort to answer the questions I have raised in your first responses to the thread.

Thank you,

Osborn