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It's very difficult to create a rule "allow mild use of steroids, but don't allow more extreme use of steroids". If the Navy could easily get away with giving SEALs steroids, they would be motivated to give them enough steroids to maximize performance, not to maximize performance subject to the constraint "... as long as they are mild and don't affect health much".
In fact, your own post shows this. You mention "mild" steroids, but then go on to point out that we ask SEALs to sacrifice their lives. Do you really think the Navy wouldn't also ask them to sacrifice their health?
Just like the proper amount of a crime that is costly to stop is non-zero, the proper amount of "SEALs killing themselves by violating the rules" is non-zero.
This is true, and yet PEDs are mostly legal (or have legal versions). Specific sports ban them for competitive reasons, but surely that runs exactly counter to the point of a military, which is to be as overpowered and uncompetitive* as possible. We allow civilians to take these for fun. Is there a good reason to ban soldiers from using them? We might find that "roid rage" is too dangerous when combined with grenade launchers, but I can't think of many other good ones.
*"If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck" - Vegetius (probably)
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Definitely true. I think every gym should have the Glassman quote framed or crosstitched or something:
If you're so paralyzed of hurting yourself that you don't try, you'll never achieve anything. But nonetheless, it's tragic to see extraordinary lives cut short, and we should be minimizing the damage. Such as by having a medical team directly monitor PED use. What's fun about it is, once the docs are monitoring things like bloodwork regularly to help you through your official cycle, it's super easy to spot if something else is being inserted off the books.
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This is true if "rule" means "lightly enforced law, for the general population". However, the navy could very easily (technically, idk about politically) run a "properly used steroid" program themselves, provide the drugs, ensure they're administered very safely, and still test for use of other drugs. If done well, this might reduce steroid use in general. (good idea? dunno. just a point about the power of a sovereign).
If they can run a "properly used steroid" program, they could also run a "dangerously used steroid" program (while still calling it "properly used", of course). The only significant forces that would stop them from doing that are forces that would stop them from having a steroid program at all.
The main forces that would stop the Navy from any sort of program are political.
... huh? This is like saying that hospitals can't use fentanyl as an anaesthetic sometimes, because the only thing stopping them from doing that are what's stopping them from selling fentanyl on the street. And yet ... they do the former, and not the latter. Or ... the only thing stopping the military from conquering the US and starting a new regime are that they don't really want to (and a lot more about connections, power, socialization, etc, but w/e). And that's the same thing stopping them from doing anything else. Yet they can revise their regulations without risking a coup.
The navy could do many different things they don't do. They could simply choose to run a good program and not a bad one, like they do with every other thing they do.
I'm not making a generic argument about when you can do X. I'm making a fact-specific one. There could, logically speaking, be things that stop the Navy from using steroids to excess without stopping them from using steroids at all. I'm just not convinced that these logical possibilities exist in reality, for the actual Navy.
The mechanism the navy would use would be their ... organizational structure, discipline, hierarchy, higher-ups ordering lower-levels around. The same way they prevent crime, the same way they organize training, the same way they deploy people. If that was used to give people steroids in a performance-enhancing yet restrained physically nondamaging way - why isn't that possible?
Like, they wouldn't allow using steroids you purchase yourself any more than they do now, that'd still be tested for and not allowed. But there'd be a navy doctor that puts you on a navy steroid program, monitors your dose and progress and health, etc.
Because it's not in the Navy's interests to limit the dosages to nondamaging ones. It's in their interests to give SEALs dosages of steroids that maximize the immediate usefulness of SEALs to the Navy, even at the cost of bad long term effects. So that'll be what they do.
Is this intended to be a point about military culture specifically - that the people who run it wouldn't limit the doses? Or 'interests' generally? It's certainly possible to have a Navy that limits steroid doses despite those 'interests'. But it's very possible the current navy wouldn't.
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