ProphetFighting

Jeff Monson on steroids: legalize it….

If you’ve read my stuff in the past you know I’m a huge Jeff Monson fan. The 5’7″ human bulldozer is not only IMO one of the more underrated fighters in MMA, but easily one of the most intelligent and interesting. He’s also well known for his anarchist political beliefs and apropos of that he gave his take on the steroid “scandal” in sports in an interview with Sherdog‘s Jordan Breen. First, he was very candid about his own experience with so called performance enhancing drugs:

“It’s hard to get to get to this level without having used something. When people ask me on the street or in the gym and they’re polite about it, I’ll tell ‘em, and I’ve used things before. And it’s been quite a while. Like I said, I’ve been tested for the last couple years in the UFC and I’ve been clean and will continue to be so. You just can’t do it anymore. You just can’t risk your career by taking something like that.”

“You can have a great career and they find out you used, and then you have a black mark on you forever,” continued Monson. “It’s just not worth it. You can’t do those things. You’re playing kinda ‘chemistry set’ with your career and I don’t think there’s enough knowledge out there to be able to do that, unless you’re like a doctor.”

That’s a similar take to one expressed in the essential Libertarian political journal REASON awhile back:

A more objective survey of steroids’ role in sports shows that their health risks, while real, have been grossly exaggerated; that the political response to steroids has been driven more by a moral panic over drug use than by the actual effects of the chemicals; and that the worst problems associated with steroids result from their black-market status rather than their inherent qualities. As for baseball’s competitive integrity, steroids pose no greater threat than did other historically contingent “enhancements,” ranging from batting helmets to the color line. It is possible, in fact, that many players who use steroids are not noticeably improving their performance as a result.

There are more than 600 different types of steroids, but it’s testosterone, the male sex hormone, that’s most relevant to athletics. Testosterone has an androgenic, or masculinizing, function and an anabolic, or tissue-building, function. It’s the second set of effects that attracts athletes, who take testosterone to increase their muscle mass and strength and decrease their body fat. When testosterone is combined with a rigorous weight-training regimen, spectacular gains in size and power can result. The allure is obvious, but there are risks as well.

You can find a number of additional REASON articles on steroids here.

Monson’s solution for the “problem” of steroids is sensible, but not one that will make him popular with imagine conscious promoters, sanctimonious sports media types or nanny politicians: he things that they should all be legal. I added a little emphasis to what I consider the most salient justification for this.

Monson was also asked for his thoughts as to how steroids and performance enhancing substances should be regulated by athletic commissions and other legislative bodies in the sport of mixed martial arts. Monson, a self-described anarchist, was particularly in favor of deregulation.

“If it were up to me everything would be legal,” said the Washington native. “I don’t think they should make anything illegal because you have fighters coming up or body builders or college players, whatever, using $400-500 a month worth of supplements a month that you get at GNC, then you got another guy coming up that can’t afford that stuff, so you got an unlevel playing field with that.”

“You have the pre-testosterone this and anabolic-booster that — it’s all legal,” The Snowman continued. “To me, what’s really the difference? That stuff is just as expensive as steroids anyway and not everyone can afford it, not everyone has access to that stuff. Just because it’s legal or not legal, who determines that stuff? The government. Some guy in a suit that’s never taken it, doesn’t know anything about it.”

The case Monson makes can be applied to so many other issues I don’t know where to start. It’s essentially why I’ve always been “pro choice”–I don’t like the idea of a bunch of white, middle age men in suits telling women what to do with their own bodies and telling doctors how to practice medicine. The fact that a number of said white, middle age men can’t control their own personal lives doesn’t exactly give them a great deal of moral high ground.

As a tech guy, its galling when politicians who are tech illiterate are in a position to create laws regulating the industry. The extreme example here is Ted Stevens’ now classic “series of tubes” treatise of Internet functionality. His utter lack of understanding about the Internet is not surprising and could be written off as a technology generation gap were he not in a position to regulate the Internet. And as a MMA fan, who can forget John McCain’s ignorant dismissal of the sport as “human cockfighting?” Were he any other bluehaired scold it would be a lot easier to dismiss his ignorance than it is when he’s in a position to pass laws regulating the sport.

So regardless of what you think about steroids and their effect on the sport you’ve got to admit that Monson has a point. There’s no reason that a bunch of white middle age guys in suits should be given power to regulate the lives of others in areas they have no understanding of. Thanks to my Australia based, Croatian speaking Austrian economic genius associate Edo I now consider myself an “anarcho-capitalist” which is frequently referred to as “economic anarchy” so clearly I have a lot of philosophical common ground with “The Snowman”. Agree with him or not, however, his unique, intelligent and articulate perspective is an asset to the sport.

Jeff Monson interview @ Sherdog

[tags]Jeff Monson, UFC, MMA, mixed martial arts, steroids, anarchy, anchro-capitalism[/tags]

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