Friday, March 05, 2004
Chemical Entertainment
Ralph Wiley has an interesting column on Barry Bonds and Steroids over at ESPN. One point that I had never thought of is the issue of performance-boosting drugs and entertainment. Sure, you can point your finger at some athlete, but three fingers point right back at you. What Wiley is talking about here is the $2.5Billion annual market for Viagra. We get on our soap boxes and cluck with disapproval when some athlete uses chemicals to help him out when nature denies, but if we made Viagra illegal we would have a drug market that would make crack cocaine look like Kool-Aid. There are other issues here (how bad are the effects of steroids on long-term health as opposed to Viagra? Well, as Wiley points out, Bonds is still ticking at age 40, unlike names like Caminiti, Canseco, and for the sake of argument, two more white guys, Brady Anderson and Mark McGwire), but the point is still valid - from caffeine to the little blue pill, our society has a chemical crutch.
posted by David 11:58 PM
