Rationality Reaches the Drug War

Here's some good news for latte-drinking jocks. For once, some healthy perspective is being observed in the battle against performance-enhancing drugs.

Caffeine has been removed from the list of substances international sports authorities have banned or restricted. The move came as part of a comprehensive review by the World Anti-Doping Agency, whose new code went into effect Jan. 1. Now national governing bodies for all Olympic sports are in the process of adopting it.

The reasoning was both practical and philosophical. Recent research shows that high doses of caffeine actually may hurt, not help, athletic performance and that any benefit probably results from just a cup or two of coffee.

With serious doping issues bedeviling competition at all levels, sports medicine experts such as Dr. Gary Wadler believe it would be foolish to deny athletes their morning java.

"I feel very strongly that we should use our cannons to go after the elephants," says Wadler, a New York University professor of medicine who sat on the WADA committee that revised the prohibited-substance list.

Now, if the government could finally become similarly enlightened in legalizing marijuana--thus generating new tax revenue, cleaning tens of thousands of non-violent offenders out of our overburdened prison system, and destigmatizing a substance which is less harmful than alcohol--or, at the very least, legalizing it for legitimate medical purposes.