I don't care if I never get back
Adults should be allowed to take steroids, or any other drug, for that matter. The government has no business telling you what you can and cannot put into your body. Professional sports leagues can decide whether the use of steroids are tantamount to cheating, and can discipline players accordingly. It is no business of Congress, one way or another.
Labels: steroids
posted by Jonathan Potts at
9:06 PM
9 Comments:
But you forget that baseball doesn't fall under anti-trust laws because baseball doesn't fall under interstate commerce, so it is the business Congress.
Blame the 1922 Supreme Court decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League and 1972's Flood v. Kuhn which gave Congress the sole power to change baseballs anti-trust status.
The steriod issue is BS, but it is Congression business when it comes to baseball.
10:34 PM
That should read "Congressional."
10:36 PM
I knew someone was going to mention the anti-trust exemption. Perhaps what I should have said was "this doesn't merit Congress' attention."
9:39 AM
That makes more sense.
I think the whole thing is a big waste of time and money considering it is timed to start with the NCAA Tourney and the fact that Barry Bonds isn't there because they didn't "want a circus."
As everything else done by Congress it will be a half-assed attempt for answers that will delve into free TV face time for Congressmen who will ask for autographs after it is done.
6:36 PM
To his credit, John McCain has been laboring for many years to clean up steroids in baseball AND reform the absurdity of all the alphabet prize fighting organizations fixing matches.
He also has worked quietly to end the practice of boxers with serious health problems from leaving states with strict regulations to fight as dancing meat in slugfests assembled in states with lax commissions.
Had baseball had the balls (yes, pun intended) to do something about steroids in the 1990s, Congress wouldn't be doing something now. But McCain was talking about his concerns a decade ago, when sportswriters and blow-hard columnists wouldn't give him an inch of copy.
You can be a libertarian if you want, but that won't fix the criminal racket that's organized ball, and if tackling steroids is the first step toward cleaning up professional athletics, than I say, 'Full speed ahead.'
Maybe the committee can tell John Forbes Kerry the names of his beloved Red Sox, too.
7:40 PM
Again, please explain why Congress should waste their time "fixing" professional sports? How is that their responsibility, beyond the contrived rationale of interstate commerce?
9:22 PM
Well, since you asked:
1. Congress has oversight over the trafficking of steroids because of the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990. Steroids were marked as Schedule III drugs, in the same class as LSD, barbituates and narcotic painkillers, such as Vicodin. There might be questions about which substances similar to anabolic steroids (say, synthetic versions of HGH) should be added to the schedule.
2. The primary enforcement agencies of the ASCA are the DEA, FBI, U.S. Postal Inspectors and U.S. Customs. DOJ can prosecute alleged offenders in federal court. The budgets, staffing and strategies of these agencies are therefore under the purview of Congress, and some legislators might be interested in published reports that FBI agents had long had baseball stars under investigation, but failed to act on trafficking evidence.
3. U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (USSG) under the ASCA likewise are set by Congress. Congress might decide in light of the MLB scandal, for example, that the guidelines need to be tweaked.
If your argument is a libertarian one, that the feds should have no oversight over the substances adults buy and take, then I won't disagree with you.
But you can't say Congress doesn't have oversight, or shouldn't have oversight, over MLB steroid trafficking, because the legislators do.
11:19 AM
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11:30 AM
My other comment isn't showing up, so let me clarify--Those are perhaps sound legal reasons, but I am saying that this is not something that Congress should be wasting its time investigating. It's a Major League Baseball problem, period.
7:52 PM
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