pellius
First, I want to make a distinction between a rights a person has as a private citizen and the rights they have when they voluntarily join an organization. In the case of a sporting organization such as say the NBA, IFBB, Football Boxing, MLB they can, for the most part, make any rules they want and the rules they make are purely arbitrary. They could easily declare 4 strikes or 2 strikes for baseball, 75 yards or 125 yards for a football field, 10 rounds or 25 rounds for boxing, etc. They can arbitrarily ban anything they want be it Coca Cola, caffeine, sweet potatoes or anabolic steroids. They can also require anything they want such as you have to wear a helmet, or shorts, or yellow shoes, not swear or make obscene gestures, etc. In that sense, an athlete has no rights other than the right to agree or disagree with the terms and rules and whether or not they choose to participate.
Steroids are like nuclear weapons, in that they cannot be uninvented. Whatever level of competition you get down to, starting from the highest to lowest, that does not drug test, will outperform the best natural athletes who are being tested. Take a very quantifiable event like track. If the fastest sanctioned sprinters in the world are all being drug tested, but can be bested by non-tested amateurs, why would anyone watch the pros?
Now imagine this as a BB scenario. Why would anyone pay to see smaller, softer pros in the IFBB (if they were tested) than bigger, harder amateurs who aren't tested? Said amateurs might get pro cards to cash in on their recognition, but then shrink...and the pros might then drop to the amateur ranks, use and become more widely known.
I'm not discounting natural ability and hard work, but the fact is, so long as Joe Shmo isn't drug tested, the pros have no choice but to use.
*Yes, I realize they can also choose not to use and not to be pros.
