Like it or not, taking drugs is a matter of course in the United States. For any generation younger than the baby boomers, blazing a joint at a party is pretty much on par with having a drink. Exactly which drug leads to the use of other drugs is really irrelevant. The fact is, if you are inclined to use drugs, then you will use drugs-- either for recreation or performance enhancement-- there's really no moral difference. Anyone who thinks there is, and smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol to boot, is a total hypocrite. There is no denying that anabolic steroids, and their accompanying drugs, have a tremendous positive effect on building muscle and burning fat, but the fact is that these same substances are illegal where most bodybuilders live.
However, when you consider the evidence and compare them to the drugs that are legal, there's no sane reason for these drugs to be illegal. Somehow, the war on drugs has scooped bodybuilding up into the fold, and something has to be done to pull it back out and give the bodybuilders back their freedom to make choices regarding their own bodies. If you look at the facts, there's undeniably a strong case to legalize all drugs and put the freedom of choice into the hands of the people where it belongs. America is supposed to be the land of the free, but it really isn't.
When President Nixon declared war on drugs, it was criticized by Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman for the freedom it disallows. According to Friedman, "On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government," [and the tax payer's money], "to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for him and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs." ....No wonder he won a Nobel Prize.
Friedman's sentiments came over a hundred years after those of radical 19th century utilitarian English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who's famous essay "On Liberty" argued that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physically or moral, is not a sufficient warrant........ Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
Clearly these two great minds understood the basic tenets of personal freedom, and it's interesting that Americans were ultimately allowed these freedoms when the U.S. government decided the legalities of alcohol and tobacco. But what were they thinking when they classified the other drugs, specifically marijuana, cocaine, and subsequently steroids? Personal freedom in these regards were clearly usurped.
Let's take tobacco and marijuana for a moment. Close your eyes and imagine that you're a law maker and you need to decide what to do with these two plants. Bear in mind that they are both plants, having inhabited the earth long before modern man knew what to do with them. How it was even possible that a government could exercise its power on the recreational use of these two plants is no different than deciding the legalities of green tea. The notion is absolutely ludicrous. Nevertheless, one plant is physically addictive, carcinogenic, habit-forming and is responsible for tens of thousands of cases of heart disease, emphysema and cancer related deaths a year. The other is virtually harmless by comparison, non-addictive physically, and in over 100 studies, has shown beneficial analgesic, anti-asthma, and anti-glaucoma properties, not to mention the fact that there are no reported deaths from its use-- probably because even the most ardent pot head doesn't smoke 40 joints a day, but a two-pack-a-day smoker does. Which one do you legalize and promote the world over? The fact that tobacco is legal and pot isn't is absolutely insane. The gateway to harder drugs theory is poppycock too. Anyone who smoked a joint in high school did so after smoking cigarettes in the bathroom or drinking beer out of a keg.
Has Nixon's war on drugs thwarted drug use in this country? Those who answered "yes," line up over there-- the Brooklyn Bridge will be going on sale soon. An easy surf down the internet will substantiate the following statistics; the United States of America sustains 6% of the world's population and we consume 68% of the world's drug production. Nixon, roll over in your grave; we're talking about a $60 billion market in the U.S. today. Imagine the potential tax revenues that the government could be earning. But instead, the U.S. government spends $40 billion a year of tax payer's money keeping Tricky Dick's legacy afloat. That's what happens when law makers drink instead of smoke dope.
Furthermore, the drug war has had 35 years to corrupt law enforcement, encourage gang violence and spread crime, erode civil liberties, and endanger public health by making it impossible to regulate the quality of a widely consumed product. And, the problem is global. In the U.S. and in the countries that supply it, the attempt to wage war on drugs has had effects more devastating than the drugs themselves, including the following social anomalies:
Police departments rely on criminals to do their job. Why? Because drug dealing is a victim-less crime-- the guy buying the drugs is just as happy as the guy selling them. Who is going to report a crime-- the little rat who got popped last week? According to Friedman, the use of these "informants" generates an additional enormous expenditure for the tax payers to bear. These immense sums of money will inevitably lead to corruption-- as they did during prohibition. The use of informants also leads to violations of civil rights of innocent people, to the shameful degree that forcible entry and the forfeiture of property without due process are common today.
And, like with most wars, there are POWs. According to the Department of Justice, In 1970, 200,000 people were in state and federal prisons. At year-end 2007, the total incarcerated population reached 2,413,112 inmates in state and federal prisons. The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 738 per 100,000 of the national population. American prisons are crammed with drug offenders who now account for roughly one in four of all those in state custody and more than half of all federal prisoners. Attempting to win the war on drugs is the reason the far majority of these people, including some bodybuilders, are incarcerated. Do you have any idea what that costs taxpayers on top of the $40 billion it took to put them in there? According to the American Corrections Association, the average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the US is $67.55. State prisons held 253,300 inmates for drug offenses in 2005. That means states spent approximately $17,110,415 per day to imprison drug offenders, or $6,245,301,475 per year. And don't think they will be better people when they come out.
To make matters worse, the US locks up more African-Americans, disproportionate to its population than any other country on the planet. According to Connecticut's Director of Addiction Services, for every 100,000 American men arrested, 3,109 of them are African-American. Our closest Competitor in the race to lock up black men is South Africa. Even during its pre-Mandela period of overt public policy of apartheid, South Africa incarcerated 729 black men for every 100,000 men. Did you get that? We lock up over four times as many black men as the only country in the world that had an overt political policy of apartheid with an inversely proportional ratio of blacks to whites as compared to America!
The drug war bombs the inner city too. Crowded inner cities concentrate the population making it considerably more advantageous to sell drugs on city streets than country roads. Although, not all drug buyers live in the city, drug dealers do - along with the violence and crime associated with disputes between rival drug dealers. Dealers who only have a burgeoning market because drugs are illegal. Al Capone was to Prohibition what the Latin Kings are to the drug war.
If drugs are bad for you, the war made them worse. This period of drug prohibition has made drugs extremely expensive - relative to their production costs, even though street prices have come down - and of questionable quality. Drug users must consort with criminals and many times become criminals themselves in order to finance their habit. This whole AIDS spreading dirty needle sharing thing is a direct result of pins being hard to get, thanks to the drug war.
The DEA has put so much pressure on physicians who prescribe narcotics for pain, patients in pain are chronically under treated. According to the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, two-thirds of all terminal cancer patients do not receive adequate pain medication. Wouldn't want a cancer patient dying a drug addict, would we? The numbers for non-terminally ill patients are surely higher.
Globally, the war fought here has a harmful effect on the drug producing countries. Columbia, Mexico, Peru and others have suffered the loss of thousands of lives, lost enormous wealth, and have had the stability of their governments undermined - because we have a drug war. If we didn't, we wouldn't have a market for imported drugs - there would be no drug cartels, and all treachery that goes along with them.
To employ Nixon ideology, however noble, to rid bodybuilding of drugs has surely done for bodybuilding what the drug war did for America. I'm sure you caught many of the similarities above. Already, not withstanding the criminal aspects, the illegal drugs used in bodybuilding have created their own set of evils, many of which do parallel street drugs. However, unlike street drug users, the greatest risk to a bodybuilder is still getting caught. But how did this happen?
