According to "Rio Paralympics 2016: Russian athletes banned after doping scandal" (2016), the reaction to the Paralympic Committee's decision to do what the Olympic Committee did not and ban Russian athletes because of systematic cheating involving the Russian government has been greeted by most people as the right move, although many who approve also regret the cost it imposes on innocent athletes who cannot now compete due to the ban.
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My Yes/No question is:
Should drugs be banned from the Olympics?
My answer is:
No, athletes should be free to decide how they excel.
Although they are supposed to be friendly tests of amateurs, the Olympic games seem to me nothing so much as obsessive, mindless nationalism and thoroughly professional. I can't think of any good reason to keep pretending that the competing athletes are not professionals seeking money and fame and lots of money. As such, if they want to use drugs to improve their performance, that should be their decision. How is using a drug to boost your running or whatever worse than practising nine hours a day, which no normal person could afford to do? Or is using a drug any less honest than paying a fortune to a team of top trainers to make you better than poorer competitors who cannot afford that luxury?
Drugs are generally bad news, although human beings have always used them for many reasons, and they do have their uses: would anyone really refuse cancer drugs just because they are drugs? And although alcohol is the most dangerous of drugs in popular use, aren't there some very real advantages to using this drug that off set the road deaths, the rapes, the family violence and other ugly crimes that are caused by red wine, beer, whisky and other forms of alcohol? And if a drug makes us stronger or faster or whatever, shouldn't the individual decide for themselves whether to take the risk or not? If the Olympics and other competitive sport are just about winning, as they plainly seem to be, with every athlete using drugs, the performance will be much better over all, and perhaps more exciting for the audience.
And the issue of drug use in sport, which led me first to drug use generally, such as in medicine, also reminds me of the unjust laws many nations have in place that criminalize the sale and use of some popular recreational drugs. It seems to me not only immoral but deeply irrational to make something as harmful to society as alcohol legal whilst all the less harmful drugs, from marijuana to yaa baa, are illegal to use and deal. Weird!
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Reference
Rio Paralympics 2016: Russian athletes banned after doping scandal. (2016, August 2016). BBC Sport. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/sport/disability-sport/37002582
Your argument reminds me of my first time in America. I was studying PG in the high school in NH. My roommate was a senior who had studied there for almost 4 years. He was nice and quite hard-working. However, I suspected that he had been using Marijuana for a while despite the school's rules clearly state that all drug are forbidden. When I went to dinning hall and back, my room often smelled like burnt grass. This was quite a serious problem because our school, to make sure that all senior stay in the line, will expel senior (other grades still got 2 detention to go through before being expelled) on the spot. It was quite a moral dilemma. If teachers found out, I would be in trouble for not telling them. However, that was his last year, and I did not want his school report to look bad. In the end, I decided to keep it to myself. Drug, if it was used correctly, won't hurt anyone too much. Like you mentioned in your post, I agree that these drugs are much less harmful than alcohol. We graduated. He behave normally, and I couldn't tell if he was high at all. Looking on the bright side, I might overthink it. He might not actually use those drugs. :D
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