Not all drugs are created equal

The argument

The debate over doping is usually conducted as though performance-enhancing drugs formed a single category, to be permitted or prohibited together. This argument's claim is that the category is too coarse to support one rule, because the substances within it differ enormously in what they do to the person taking them. Steroids sit at one end. They carry far more significant health risks than other performance-enhancing drugs, and proponents of this position accept without qualification that they should not be allowed under any circumstances. The case for partial permission is not a case for them. Milder drugs are a different matter. Where a substance's health impact is marginal, the justification for prohibiting it — that sport should not require athletes to damage themselves in order to compete — largely falls away, and what remains is a rule banning something that harms nobody. Such drugs could be permitted in a controlled way without posing a serious threat to an athlete's health. Regulation is what makes the distinction workable, and proponents argue it would improve safety rather than compromise it. If the drugs were permitted and heavily regulated, dosage, purity and medical supervision would all come into view, so that even the marginal health impacts could be radically minimised. The comparison to make is not with a drug-free sport but with the present arrangement, in which athletes who dope do so covertly, without medical oversight, using whatever is hardest to detect rather than whatever is safest. Treating a mild, supervised substance exactly as a dangerous one is therefore neither honest about the difference nor better for the athletes involved. Since not all drugs are created equal, some doping should be allowed — the kind that can be taken safely under regulation — while the genuinely hazardous remains banned.

Context

Taking a small dose of EPO does not carry the same health risks as taking anabolic steroids for example.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It isn't just the health impacts that make doping unsuited to professional sport. Doping goes against the notion of equal competition, a core tenet of professional sport. Therefore, no doping should be permitted, even if it can be done with no risk to the athlete's health.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Doping, of any kind, runs counter to the spirit of professional sport.