“Would you like to take performance-enhancing drugs to boost your pro sports career? Are the drugs banned as a form of cheating? No problem. Just find a doctor willing to certify that you have a “deficit” of the performance factor in question.
That’s what seems to be happening in Major League Baseball. Three years ago, the league belatedly banned stimulants on the grounds that they unfairly aided players’ performance. At the time, 28 players had “therapeutic use exemptions” allowing them to take drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall. “Therapeutic use” means you can justifiably use the drug because you need it for a medical condition. If you didn’t have the condition, you’d just be a normal pro baseball player, and the attention-focusing benefits of Ritalin would be a form of “enhancement,” i.e., cheating.
When the league banned these drugs, an amazing thing happened. The number of players claiming and obtaining “therapeutic use” exemptions for stimulants nearly quadrupled from 28 to 103. The basis of their claims? They all had attention “deficit” disorder. Accordingly, they were entitled to attention-boosting drugs.
Among children, the prevalence of ADHD is estimated at 3% to 5%. Among adults, the rate of diagnosis is between 1% to 3,5%. But among pro baseball players, the disease seems epidemic. The league has just announced that the number of “therapeutic use” exemptions based on ADHD increased again last year from 103 to 106. That means 8 percent of major-league players have ADHD—twice the rate among children and three to eight times the rate among adults.”
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