The Toronto Globe and Mail has a long write-up of the debate last week. Unfortunately, it’s behind a subscription wall. But here are a few self-indulgent excerpts:

Arguing for the affirmative, alongside Dr. Fost, a medical doctor, and Mr. Savulescu, an ethicist, was supposed to be Ben Johnson: cheater, victim, pariah, scapegoat, energy-drink spokesman take your pick. He has bailed out at the last minute on the advice of his lawyers, because of a lawsuit in which he is involved in Canada. Mr. Balko, a libertarian (the similarity between his name and that of the lab that supplied drugs to Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and others is duly noted), steps in to take his place, killing some of the curiosity factor, but also tilting the balance considerably in terms of the actual debating talent on stage. It is obvious very early on that Mr. Murphy, the former Atlanta Brave, and Mr. Michael, who made a name for himself yelling over sports-highlight footage, are in awfully deep.

[...]

Radley Balko offers classic libertarian arguments about allowing adults to make informed choices. “It’s about paternalism and it’s about control. We have a full-blown moral panic on our hands here.”

Though the sympathies of the crowd - and, it certainly appears, Bob Costas, who struggles in the moderator’s role not to wear his heart on his sleeve - are with them, the side arguing against doping is a little short on ammunition.

Dale Murphy, who is a dead-square honest guy, a Mormon and a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, just thinks that drugs are flat-out wrong. “To accept this motion would simply set us back,” he says. “To legitimize performance-enhancing drugs in sports, I feel, would send the wrong message to young athletes.”

George Michael, a familiar, popular figure with this audience, spends most of the time talking about famous athletes he knows and what they have told him, using a lot of “I’s” and a lot of “me’s” - unprovable, anecdotal stuff that the guys on the other side of the table easily tear to pieces.

The real surprise of the evening is Mr. Pound, the Montreal lawyer, former Olympic athlete, International Olympic Committee member and former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency. In other situations, he certainly isn’t short of swagger, prone to making wild, vague assertions about how many athletes in a given sport might be using and how teen girls use anabolic steroids to “tone up.”

Here he seems a bit cowed by the setting, and by the opposition. There is one easy swipe at the pathetic absent party: “Ben Johnson lied to me in 1988. I was really looking forward to having him here tonight. Too bad his lawyer pulled him out.”

But beyond that, while throwing out quotes from Vince Lombardi and Bishop Fulton Sheen, he makes an argument that effectively boils down to the notion that rules are rules, which athletes must accept if they are going to play the game. But since the parameters of this debate involve not breaking rules but changing them, in the end he is left to quibble about how dangerous some drugs are, or are not.

[...]

When all is said and done, the sense sitting in the audience is that the battle of hearts, of emotions, hasn’t been won. Those who were appalled by the whole idea of hero athletes doping at the start probably still aren’t ready to accept the kind of measured, equal, open application of drugs that the affirmative side suggests.

The battle of ideas, though, is something else entirely. Just as Mr. Rosenkranz had hoped, there has obviously been a willingness to open up, to listen, to put preconceptions aside. In the final poll, the yea-to-nay ratio has shifted to 37-59, not the makings of a public-opinion revolution, but a clear victory for those pushing against the tide.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 10:47 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.