Drug Testing at Valley Forge

Mack Hall

Last week the most recent drug scandal took everyone’s attention away from lead-painted Chinese Christmas toys, and no wonder. Who among us has not walked across a dark parking lot fearing an attack by a spaced-out baseball team leaping out from behind a Yugo? And that scary rustle of leaves outside one’s bedroom window in the middle of the night – that’s not Grendel; that’s a steroid-zombie outfielder hungry for human flesh.

George Mitchell’s many pages of he-said / he-said (there seems to be no she-said) tittle-tattle and McCarthy-ite lists are interesting reading, but one doubts that Mr. Mitchell himself will be required to pee into a cup before he gets paid lots and lots of taxpayers’ money for repeating gossip.

If the drug menace is properly addressed in baseball players, the focus should be expanded to practitioners other critical fields of endeavor, such as chess players, cooking-show hosts, and dancing-with-the-stars contestants.

The purity of sport – but no drug-testing for newscasters, writers, movie stars, or the weird little man in the bedsheet mumbling what he says are prayers at the airplane departure gate.

How drug-free and clear is the mind of someone freezing – since the ice has cut the power to his heater -- in midwestern blizzards while working out in said mind – since the ice has cut the power to his computer -- a stern letter to capitalist oppressors about global warming?

People who walk around with tin crickets stuck to their ears and talking to themselves are definitely in need of testing for something – such as a life.

Have you noticed that drug testing is aimed at the working people in America, not at the deadbeats? An argument can be made that a pilot or trucker or railway engineer should be tested for drugs, but why are lazy, useless layabouts (Congress comes to mind) the pilot or trucker or railway engineer must support never tested?

If a young man must pee into a cup before throwing a baseball, should not a priest or minister do the same before giving a sermon? After all, which event is more important?

If a citizen is accused of a drug-related crime, true justice requires that the investigators and attorneys and judges prove themselves drug-free first – here’s your cup, your honor.

The Constitution gives the people three branches of government – the executive, the legislative, and the judicial; no mention is made in that venerable document of fourth and fifth branches, the contract medical lab and MySpace. Let us have a return to justice for all, not suspicion and humiliation for some Americans and class privilege for others.