Before the ill-fated War on Terrorism there was the more-provenly ill-fated War on Drugs. One of those drugs wasn’t deco-durabolin, or HGH, or some other performance enhancing drug. But our approach to stopping the scourge of PED’s in baseball and other sports has been more akin to our failed approach to stopping cocaine coming from Columbia and heroin coming from Afghanistan than any actual strategies contemporary thinkers might have come up with.
Whether those strategies might be successful remains to be seen, but JC Bradbury’s approach has the virtue of actual incentives and our knowledge that it hasn’t failed before. I used to believe that because it was impossible to control the use of illicit drugs sports shouldn’t outlaw them, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. But I’m totally sure that if you’re going to ban illicit drugs you better come up with effective ways of getting them out of the game.
If you don’t, the whole system will collapse. As it should.