The Coercion Argument Against Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Abstract

This paper is a critique of the coercion argument against performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). According to this argument, lifting the ban on PEDs would undermine the autonomy of athletes by creating a situation where everyone must either use PEDs or not compete at the highest levels of sport. Four problems are raised for this argument and it is concluded that the argument fails. A variation on the coercion argument is also considered and rejected.

KEYWORDS:

• performance-enhancing drugs
• steroids
• coercion

Acknowledgement

I thank Henry Jacoby, A.J. Kreider and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. One might wonder how these opposing positions on PEDs in sport connect to conservative and liberal political ideologies in general. I will not address that question here. In this context ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ will be used narrowly to refer only to these opposing positions concerning PEDs.

2. The locus classicus for this sort of position in the philosophical literature is Brown 1985a.

3. An anonymous referee points out that, depending on the sport, this may not always be true.

4. See Simon (1985).

5. An anonymous referee comments that, in the majority of cases where high-profile athletes have been exposed for using PEDs, the only harms that have come to them are penalties incurred from breaking the rules.

6. The McTwist was subsequently surpassed by the 720 which was itself supplanted by the 900. A McTwist these days won’t even get you top amateur status.

7. Nozick’s own statement of the conditions required for coercion are more complicated than what follows. I have paraphrased for ease of exposition under the belief that the complications are not important to the topic discussed here. It should also be noted that Nozick regarded his essay as largely ‘exploratory’ and intended it mainly ‘to raise questions and suggest problems’ (1969, 441) rather than answer and solve them.

8. This interview appears in the 2012 documentary Bones Brigade: An Autobiography.

9. Cf. Brown ((1985b), 35).