BOMB THE COCA FIELDS AND IGNORE THE GROWING SICKNESS AT HOME

It is the American equivalent of the snowdrops. Though the northern cities
are still being pinched raw by snow and ice, there is this faint waft of
warm southerly breeze in the papers - news of baseball spring training.

In frost-free Florida and Arizona, the players have gathered in the
sunshine to prepare themselves for the season, which starts at the end of
March. But in this sombre and frigid winter, even this happy harbinger of
summer has come draped in black.

Steve Bechler, a fringe pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, turned up at the
club's Florida camp two weeks ago 10lb overweight and was predictably given
a rollicking.

As he undertook his third work-out he collapsed, was taken to hospital and
died. At first it was thought to be sunstroke. An autopsy, however, found
no solid food at all in his system, which was strange; instead there was
Xenadrine, a diet supplement billed as "the most potent fat burner on the
market". Bechler was 23; his wife is seven months pregnant with their first
child.

The active ingredient of Xenadrine is ephedrine, which is said to work as
both a stimulant and an appetite-suppressant. The makers claim their
product has been used safely by more than 20m Americans which - blimey -
would mean about one-tenth of the adult population.

As ma huang, it has been part of Chinese traditional medicine for
generations; one Chinese letter-writer said that those who oppose it are
the same "racists" who refused to countenance acupuncture.

And it will also be contended in the inevitable court case that Bechler had
a history of health problems, so who knows whether it played a part in his
death.

But this is not an isolated case, and the real sickness seems to be in
baseball. Though the game is incredibly pernickety about its standards in
some areas (eg betting) it has always been lax about drugs, of all kinds.

Twenty years ago cocaine was endemic; one player, Tim Raines, used to keep
a vial in his back pocket and reputedly would slide into base head-first
rather than feet-first to make sure it didn't break.

In the late 1990s the great home-run hitting binge started. Everyone loved
it and 1998, the year when two players, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both
smashed the old record of 61 in a season, is remembered as one of the
greatest years ever, which rejuvenated the sport and its finances.

No one cared to probe too deeply, but it later emerged that McGwire took
androstenedione, which many claim is effectively a steroid. Every wannabe
in high school copied him.

One successful slugger, Jose Canseco, admitted taking anabolic steroids
himself and said half the hitters in baseball did the same. There is no
evidence, but the stage whisper of "Barry's on 'roids" goes round the
stadium every time the present home-run king, Barry Bonds, plays an away game.

The drug culture in baseball appears to have been preserved because of the
strength of the players' union. Under the deal done last year, which
averted a strike at the last minute, there is to be a testing regime, but a
very lenient one.

The union's general counsel, Gene Orza, claimed only a couple of years back
that it was "debatable" whether steroids were performance-enhancing. The
sport has just never got interested in the problem, which is why the
authorities failed to follow the Olympics, international soccer and
American football in banning ephedrine, even after it was implicated,
inconclusively, in the death of a Minnesota Vikings lineman, Korey Stringer.

Baseball is just an extreme example of the prevailing attitude in American
sport. Look at basketball and American football, where physical freakery is
often, if not a prerequisite of success, then something very close to it.
Lord knows what the footballers take to bulk up, but I don't think it's
bangers and mash. Even the racehorses here are drugged up like the beef cattle.

And, as Duncan Mackay reported in these pages last month, an American gold
medallist from the 2000 Sydney Olympics who had previously tested positive
for steroids has managed to keep his (or her) medal and reputation, because
the Americans have got away with keeping the identity secret. It is
rumoured to be someone very well known.

This is a country that bombs Colombian coca fields in a lunatic attempt to
stop the unstoppable. It still persecutes the terminally ill for taking
marijuana to ease the pain. Yet confronted with blatant drug problems they
could solve, Americans look in the other direction and do nothing.