The Performance Enhancing Drug Scandal

    When someone says performance enhancing drugs we think of Sosa, McGuire, Canseco, Barry Bonds. Asterisks in sports record books.  That's the tip of the iceberg.  Bonds probably typifies the problem in his motivations. They are common to what so many face.
    Bonds was a phenomenal baseball player though he was not well liked.  He came into the National League with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was part of the foundation of a very good team that was blocked by the Atlanta Braves from true record book greatness.  Old fan's memories die hard.  Hope springs eternal, as they say.
    Barry had an entitled, resentful side to him.  He, one time, said he thought people in Pittsburgh didn't like him much because he was black.  The city with heroes such as Roberto "Bobby" Clemente,  Joe Green,  Lynn Swann,  Willie "Cool Pappa" Stargel said,  no, we don't like you because you're an asshole and he went to San Francisco without so much as a wave good-bye.
    Once in San Francisco he continued to build on an unquestioned Hall of Fame career.  Then the juiced bats and juiced arms of the Sosas and McGuires came along.  He began to fear he was being eclipsed by inferior talents artificially enhanced.  Fear.  Just fear.
    He began taking performance enhancing drugs and his asterisk was insured.
    Abuse of these drugs didn't stop there and it was never confined to sports.  Since, at least, the late 1970's, police have been abusing these drugs for the very same reason: Fear.  Just fear.
    In my personal experience I have known 3 officers who abused these drugs and can think of at least 3 others I've come in contact with but don't know personally.  In forty years it has created a dangerous ethos we see and read the consequences of on a regular basis.  Police agencies from small towns to big cities have paid literally millions over the years for the misbehavior associated with roid rage.  But it's worse than that.
    These people because of their perceived toughness and false aggression have moved into training and doctrine positions and passed  their arbitrary aggression into policy.  The most innocent of statements from the most innocent of citizens can and commonly does immediately escalate into a violent incident for no reason other than very poor training driven by the effects of performance enhancing drugs.  How else do you explain some of these incidents?   How do you explain some of these frenzies of unwarranted violence?  It's become so pervasive it's hard to not notice and it's hard to pick any given one incident as an example.
    The answer, that won't be implemented for some long time,  is universal  PED testing of law enforcement personnel from command on down.  This problem has had forty years to fester and it sure is gonna take some fixing.  There is a conspiracy of silence and it will take quite some time to penetrate but it is the real PED scandal in the U S.