Your Humble Blogger has been, for his sins, reading a thread about steroids<\/a> over at Baseball Primer<\/a>. There are interesting things about the discussion (along with the usual noise) but it occurred to me that people's attitudes about steroid use in sports can be, perhaps, a window in to more general attitudes.\n\n In the discussion between, say, 'cmr' and 'Steve Treder', I noticed that they did, in fact, agree on much of the universe. They both appear to think that the use of steroids to enhance performance is, on the whole, a Bad Thing, and that any system which is set up to force young men to make a decision between long-term health and short-term success is unfortunate. I don't even think they disagree on whether steroid use (without a doctor's approval, predicated on medical need rather than competitive desire) should be legal. The question is what steps should be taken to decrease the dangerous use of steroids and reduce the health risks. One side is for testing everybody and punishing those who break the ban. A different take is to provide counseling and information for everybody, and use combinations of social pressure, education, and supply-side enforcement.\n\n Is this the argument about steroids or about abortion? I mean, most people think abortion is wrong, but differ about how best to reduce it, and whether (and how) to punish those that resort to it. Many people think the use of marijuana is wrong, but don't want criminal charges brought against recreational users. Prostitution is dangerous, morally and emotionally degrading, and exploitative, and it's illegal in most places, but lots of people want to deal with it in a different manner. People certainly should wear protective gear whilst motorcycling, but that does not mean that everyone agrees that we should enforce laws mandating it.\n\n I think it's a bias, a mood, a mindset. Lots of people are simply reluctant to ban a substance or activity, even if it's bad. Others see the force of law as a useful tool to achieve ends, and are perplexed by reluctance to use that tool. Just something I was reminded of.\n\n Redintegro Iraq, Your Humble Blogger has been, for his sins, reading a thread about steroids over at Baseball Primer. There are interesting things about the discussion (along with the usual noise) but it occurred to me that people’s attitudes about steroid use…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16865,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/16865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"