DOUBLY DANGEROUS DRUGS

Chicago Bears quarterback Jim Miller was recently suspended for four games
and lost $100,000 in salary after a drug test revealed he had taken an
illegal anabolic steroid. Miller says he failed to read the label on a
nutritional supplement he was taking and didn't realize it contained
nandrolone.

Apparently that's the truth. After all, an athlete trying to get an illicit
edge can take any number of substances with similar effects that can't be
detected. So the violation was most likely the result of negligence rather
than an attempt to cheat.

The NFL wisely regards nandrolone and similar potions as a danger to both
the health of athletes and the integrity of the game. Like other anabolic
steroids, it carries the risks of heart failure, brain and liver tumors and
violent mood swings. Athletes, however, are tempted to ignored the risks in
the hope of getting bigger and stronger.

The league got some criticism this time because its policy on nandrolone is
stricter than its policy on cocaine. A player gets an automatic suspension
only for his second positive test for recreational drugs; for anabolic
steroids, the policy is one strike and you're out.

But that is exactly the right approach. As an NFL official explains, "If
someone uses cocaine on their own time, they are not forcing other players
to decide whether to use that in order to compete with them." The special
danger of performance-enhancing drugs is that they can turn a sport into a
pharmaceutical contest rather than an athletic one.

Major League Baseball has yet to admit the gravity of that risk. Unlike the
NFL (as well as the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee), it
allows androstenedione, a steroid-like substance famous for being used by
slugger Mark McGwire during his record-breaking 1998 home run chase.
Baseball officials say they won't budge until they see the results of a
study being done by Harvard researchers.

But one of those researchers acknowledges that andro is a health hazard,
and public confidence suffers when baseball players are held to a more
lenient standard than football players and shotputters. Other sports have
preferred to be safe rather than sorry. Baseball's contrary stance is not
getting any easier to justify.