WHICH DRUGS ARE OK, THEN?

If this column were ever to be entered in a competition, it could be
disqualified because it is being written under the influence of a
performance-enhancing drug. Or perhaps not - it depends on what you mean by
"performance-enhancing," and the definition is not as simple as it appears
at first.

The substance in use at the moment is caffeine, a mild stimulant. After
rising, I don't function very well until I've consumed two or three cups of
coffee. If I need caffeine in order to feel "normal," then is it really a
performance-enhancing drug? Or is more akin, say, to taking some aspirin
for a headache, which would make it a therapeutic drug, rather than a
performance-enhancer?

The question arises because Major League Baseball has announced a new and
stricter steroid policy in the wake of revelations that several stars could
have been building strength with some artificial help. In other words, some
of the record-setting 73 home runs that Barry Bonds hit in 2001 might have
just been routine fly balls if he hadn't been anointing himself with
"flaxseed oil" that gave him bigger muscles so he could hit the ball with
more force.

During the coming season, Bonds could well pass Hank Aaron for the record
for career home runs. Baseball mavens are already trying to figure out just
what sort of asterisk should be placed by his name in the records.

Assuming he did use steroids to build muscle, is that a
"performance-enhancing" drug, or something else?

Suppose a baseball player took cocaine before a night game. It would dilate
his pupils, thus improving his vision, and it might sharpen his
concentration, thus enabling him to field and hit better. Clearly, that's a
performance-enhancing drug. He might get similar effects from
pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in Sudafed and related over-
the-counter remedies - something he might take if he had a cold. Is that
performance-enhancement or performance-enabling? Is the difference significant?

The difference is significant in a legal sense, of course, but here I want
to deal with logic and science, not American drug laws, which have no
discernible relationship to either.

Now suppose our baseball player has a sore shoulder. He gets an injection
of a steroid - cortisone - to reduce pain and swelling, to bring him to his
"normal" abilities. Most of us, I suspect, would approve of that, just as
we don't consider someone who just took aspirin or drank coffee as being
"under the influence of a drug."

But if our player takes a different kind of steroid, those muscle-building
anabolic steroids, then he's not exactly under the influence of the drug.
He's just building muscle mass and strength. And if he achieved the same
result from diet and exercise, we would commend him for his discipline and
dedication.

So it isn't the end that matters, it's the means. We don't care if baseball
players are hulking masses of muscle, just as long as they achieved that
result without taking steroid shortcuts.

So, it's OK to take something that makes you perform as well as, but not
better than, you would if you were healthy; and you should build strength
and mass through a training regimen, not steroids.

Those attitudes seem fairly reasonable, at least for a professional sport,
and baseball commissioner Bud Selig is moving in the right direction to
protect the game.

As for the rest of society, we will never know how many decisions were made
under the influence of endorphins or ethanol or nicotine or the theobromine
in chocolate - let alone Valium, Prozac and all the rest. Or how many
people take medications, or glucosamine, statins, etc., just to get through
the day. All this talk of a "drug-free America" is just so much babbling -
the question isn't whether America operates under the influence of drugs,
but which drugs are tolerated.

For the moment, caffeine is acceptable, and I'm glad of that, though I
still don't know if it's performance-enhancing or merely performance-enabling.

* Ed Quillen of Salida is a former newspaper editor whose column appears
Tuesday and Sunday.