Juicers

[whingknutt]

So the papers recently have been going on and on about baseball, and its woes concerning performance enhancing drugs (commonly called steroids). It got me to thinking about game balance. While thinking about game balance is usually only the concern of hard-core "gamers" I think it is highly applicable to sports' "doping" issues. So, to my

Comments

[qedrakmar]

Odds are low that much would make it into therapeutic research, but if it's only 1 percent of a 2 billion dollar upswing in revenue, I'm for it. The downside is there could be any number of potential criminals taking them to enhance their mugging skills, etc... Now, police would have to be put on them to compensate, and it just spirals downhill until we're all shooting synthetic adrenaline into our eyeballs.

Besides, all juicers explode in 5 years...

[creatrixx]

Odds are low that much would make it into therapeutic research, but if it's only 1 percent of a 2 billion dollar upswing in revenue
Well, the money is going to go to the drug companies and the vast majority of these companies (per capita) make various types of drugs, both thereputic and otherwise.

could be any number of potential criminals taking them to enhance their mugging skills
Not bloodly likely. If these drugs are being priced to sell to people like professional athletes, common criminals are not going to see them as a decent financial move... even without much thought they would just be too expensive. I'd be more worried about Joe Random frat boy who takes the drugs for college sports and ends up abusing their new found physical power. Not that college athletes don't already take performance enhancing drugs...

I really do agree with Dan and not just because I'm stuck with him and agreeing with him is a good thing for me to do. ;-)

[creatrixx]

200 years ago they would have been considered giants or from some other sort of mutant race
Like your mom. But really what about the proffesional athletes of that time? The jousters. Think about those lances they had to weild. They probably would have been on steroids as well if given the option. ;-)

[benana]

Athletes already have enough trouble with being different from normal people; I don't see how this would help things. Instead it would make it pretty much mandatory to take drugs with - at best - potentially harmful side effects. Even if the drug companies do start churning out their own varieties, well... let me say that as a past user of supposedly theraputic drugs, I am disappointed with the FDA's quality control. And there will always be cheaper, less safe varieties that will become easier to acquire and more popular as the demand trickles down, and people want to copy their idols, but are unable to afford the premium version.
I think that, like other celebrities, sports figures make such ridiculous amounts of money through a fluke of economics and macropsychology (if there is such a word)... but I don't know of a good way to fix it, either. I just think that their existence is an anomaly, and though your proposal would cut down on their numbers, and hopefully their popularity as well, it isn't really fair to them.