Bigger Than Floyd, Bigger Than OP, It’s …

Signature Pharmacy? In the last day and a half the story of the Orlando pharmacy bust, which has to do with mail-order human growth hormone and other drugs, appears well on it’s way to blowing up bigger in the US than the Floyd Landis allegations or Operacion Puerto, or even the two scandals combined. It could well become something akin to BALCO, though perhaps without the clandestine new drugs made to circumvent the existing anti-doping tests.

In some ways, this could be bigger than BALCO, as the allegations appear to include high school athletes, college athletes and professional athletes, including a number of well-known names — or so some of the news accounts suggest. And Signature Pharmacy, the company at the heart of the investigation (Applied Pharmacy Services in Mobile, Alabama is part of a related investigation), did a large amount of their business over the Internet, which makes it possible that their customer base is much larger than that of BALCO.

Already, stories are appearing that allege that this athlete or that athlete’s name appears on Signature Pharmacy’s customer list. No doubt some of the people we hear about will be actual customers, but some may not. And for those who aren’t, their reputations are going to be tarnished by the infamous trial by media just as much as the guilty ones will be. Any athlete who’s ever been a customer of Signature Pharmacy or Applied Pharmacy Services must be quaking in his or her boots right now.

But as this story develops, one thing that’s important to keep in mind is this: Allegations aren’t proof. Just because someone’s name appears on a list, or someone says a person’s name appears on the list doesn’t make it so. It’s easy to rush to judgment — especially a negative judgment when stories like this break. It will be some time before we know anything definite about who did or didn’t buy drugs from these companies.

The gang at Steroid Nation have certainly got their hands full covering this story. And chances are, it’s only going to get bigger. Which means they’re going to be busy well into the future. If you’re looking for information and stories about the whole affair, Steroid Nation seems to be the go-to place for news and information.

As sexy a story as this may be for many in the news biz, what makes it sensational and sexy are the big names who may be attached. Without the big names, this story would make the news for one or two news cycles and then fade into the background. News organizations need readers/viewers, so expect this story with new information about various athletes connections to be around for quite some time to come.

The prosecutors, however, have said that their main focus in these investigations is to get at the sources of the drugs, rather than the individuals. That’s a novel approach (not), which has been used in other wars (like our decades-old War on Drugs) with mixed results. In theory, closing down the suppliers can be very effective when compared to taking on individuals, as closing down the supplier has an impact on all the individuals they supply.

But where the theory runs into cold hard reality is that the users — how many of them there may be and who they may be we don’t know for certain — will just find another avenue for purchasing illegal medications. So investigations like this will need to continue on into the future. No matter how this particular story ends, one thing is certain: The doping problem in sports will not be solved just by busting a pharmacy in Florida or one in Alabama.

Still, it certainly gets more bang for the enforcement buck to go after the supplier and disrupt users’ efforts for a short period of time rather than to try and bust individual users. But something different needs to happen in order for a major impact to be made on the numbers of people who will cheat in order to win.

And what that takes starts with our youngest athletes. Parents and coaches need to return to the idea of playing sports for the joy of it, rather than planning professional careers for Junior who’s just started playing PeeWee football. Go to any youth soccer game, football game, Little League baseball game and you will find parents pushing their children to unreasonable extremes (and if not parents doing the pushing, the coaches). In sports there will always be winners and losers, but the stakes don’t need to be so high, so young.

Rather, we need to go back to the idea of letting kids be kids, instead of miniature adults. Instead of shuttling them hither and yon to one activity after another, children need time to just be children. To play, just for the sake of playing. And parents need to be mindful of the examples they set for their young.

If you believe that it’s OK to take shortcuts, to cheat in order to get ahead, guess what lesson your children will learn? It’s certainly tempting to look for the shortcuts, the easy way out, but often it’s better to plow through, to do the work necessary in order to achieve.

It’s time to take some of the pressure off. Most athletes will never make the pros. The talented and genetically gifted being the exception. Instead of teaching our children to chase after unattainable dreams, we need to show them how to enjoy sports and how to develop all of their abilities — whatever those abilities might be.

We need to stop putting pro athletes on such lofty pedestals, only to be disappointed when they turn out to be only human. They’re people, just like you and me. Only they happen to be exceptional at their chosen profession, just like some scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, writers, engineers and others may be exceptional in their professions. But being a pro athlete doesn’t make a person a deity, and they shouldn’t be held to those kinds of standards. It’s not fair to them nor is it fair to us.

We need to be more choosy about who our role models should be. It’s time to do what Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated so many years ago — judge people by the content of their character. Character matters. That’s one of the most important lessons in life, and one that seems to be too easily lost these days.

And one of the most likely things not to be included in any of the stories that come out over the coming days, weeks and months will be any perspective on what we, as individuals and as a society, can do to bring about the changes needed to reduce the problem of doping in sports. Doping will never completely go away, but we can take steps beyond a “War on Dope” or draconian anti-doping systems that can effect real, positive change. But we have to set our minds to it. Will we?