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ambitious only for their laurels, no matter the cost. We live in a greedy world, populated every day by greedier and more ambitious people. However unfortunate it may be, sport is no hallowed ground, and the rules that apply to our capitalistic society and mentality govern there, too. As a swimmer, I never wanted to be racing against a doped opponent, because I wouldn't have won - I had a hard enough time winning as it was. I wouldn't have won, because I wouldn't have taken performance enhancers. I wouldn't have taken them because they were illegal. Would I have taken them had they been legal? Perhaps. Probably; I wanted to win, just like any athlete who is, at the end of the day, worth his salt wants to win. Because that is, after all, sport, and especially professional sport. There's a winner and a loser, and there will forever be stadiums full of the masses - masses simply incapable, by choice or by fate, of competing with the titans on the field - rooting for a winner. Those who complain of fairness complain only because they are not able to accomplish the feats of one better than they. People choose steroids to blame because they cannot hit 756 home runs, because they cannot win seven consecutive Tours de France, or win the World's Strongest Man, or go set for set with Federer. So, they sit with their morals and their Bud Lights and yell "Cheater!"

Legalizing steroids will give complainers one less thing to complain about, and will force athletes to ante up and take all the risks involved in becoming their best, as they always have. Was it advisable for Greeks to eat live bees for potency before matches, or for the Aztec and Mayan to imbibe hallucinogenic elixirs that numbed pain prior to their gory ritualistic sports? Probably not, and when we look to these old civilizations to exemplify what we should be honoring in keeping our sports and their ethics clean, we should keep this in mind.

Safety and player protection arguments are also a smoke screen for this latent envy. Of course, teenage consumption of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs or methods is not advisable, and too many parents have had to bury children who used performance enhancers. With legalization - like the legalization of many drugs - would come better access to medical oversight and care. If the leagues were really concerned with player health, they would outlaw a perfectly legal, terribly destructive, and in no way performance enhancing substance: chewing tobacco.

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