What the picogram!?
After spending much of last week traveling around Colorado and New Mexico, I finally got a chance to catch up on my YouTube viewing, which mainly consists of watching videos about MMA and UFC fighters. And to be more precise: I enjoy the soap operas the fighters provide when talking trash about other fighters. This was how I discovered the word, "picogram."
It is quite a small word. It is the measure or equivalent of one trillionth of a gram. It is a super duper small amount of anything, really.
And so, Jon "Bones" Jones was tested positive for having a dozen or so picograms of an oral drug in his body. Perhaps this, as Jones and others claim, is the result of a failed drug test back in 2017 and the current positive tests are just the old drug reappearing much later for who knows why. But the fact remains: Jones was suspended for failing a drug test in 2017 and consequently paid for his crime. It seems the current tests are victimizing him for his previous transgression(s).
But I think now is a good time to have a discussion about changing the focus of drug testing away from punishing people for cheating towards allowing fighters and athletes to be transparent about what drugs they may or may not be ingesting as part of their training regimes. In the context of cannabis consumption, more professional athletes are demanding sports bodies exempt cannabis from drug testing for a variety of reasons, one being a medical benefit for fighters to another being the simple fact that being stoned in a fight may not be the brightest or best idea.
This is a good article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2012/08/24/why-its-time-to-legalize-steroids-in-professional-sports/#6e64202e65d2) that covers why some performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) should be allowed. I think that's a good start. And it isn't that I want professional athletes to cheat or anything -- I just think humanity as a whole would benefit far more if fighters and athletes who are willing to experiment with their bodies by taking drugs do so and are transparent about it. If there's a concern about the medical health of athletes, well ... boxing and mixed martial arts by themselves cause the destruction of an athlete's well-being, so it is a murky point, the health of athletes.
And if cheating is the overriding concern, and it is a valid one, then maybe encouraging transparency is better than testing. Here, it seems possible that Jon Jones is being victimized in this case by nothing more than improved drug tests that may not have been available in 2017 or earlier. And this will always remain a problem for many athletes who accidentally consume PEDs or some chemicals that can leave behind picograms of the drugs in human bodies for months on end.
Transparency will help other fighters and their sports bodies. Additionally, bigger, faster fighters and athletes could help human biology, creating a win win win scenario. And of course, if an athlete decides to experiment with, say, a new steroid, and performs superbly on the field, great, so long as everybody knows about. This way, if the athlete prematurely dies of cancer after taking the steroid for many years, then we have some evidence of what certain drugs may or may not do to a human body. Punishing athletes willing to take huge risks to win is a strange solution to the problem of cheating based on drugs or PEDs.
Encouraging them to be transparent about their consumption and ingestion of drugs for performance-enhancing purposes would go a long ways towards restoring integrity in professional sports, at least in the context of athletes' health and their careers. Think about it.
Also: I think Jones wins his fight this Saturday night against Gustaffson by TKO in round three.