Matt Cheney, author of the bestselling “Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football,” is asking for a real and honest assessment of the steroid culture in sports, saying that drug-testing is mere wishful thinking. He makes suggestions on how this can be attained.

Cheney is not so worried about the public being numb to revelations of athletes taking steroids and performance enhancing drugs. In his opinion, fans are generally insensitive to performance enhancing drugs and that most of them actually even love the appearance and performance of athletes on drugs. What convinced him of this was the outright public dismissal of Mark McGuire’s use of the anabolic steroid androstenedione in 1998. He was also surprised with the public’s weak reactions to steroid scandals since the Balco investigations. He was expecting that people would demand more action against PEDs and boycott TV games and tickets, but instead, low attendance was only seen in games because of the economic crisis and not as a direct result of the PED controversies.

Media sensations and the noise politicians are making around the steroid scandals do not count as an outcry for reform, Cheney believes, but he also thinks that this will soon change. He believes that money will be the driving force for America’s first truly open discussion on performance enhancing drugs in sports. Not too far from today, the heavy costs of medical coverage and liability in sports will force the problem into the open.

Medical and liability coverage is skyrocketing and impact safety reform, or even abolition, may be inevitable for some sports. Cheney thinks that football could cease to exist due to lack of coverage and the risky nature of the sport, as well as the apparent doping problem, particularly the widespread use of amphetamines, painkillers, and anabolic steroids. Insurance companies are getting more and more reluctant about covering athletes with some of them dropping football altogether. These companies have been complaining about fatalities and football injuries for decades and their anxieties have only been increasing ever since the notorious uncontrollable PED use in the 1980s.

Today, gigantic football players dominate the game and their bulk is primarily fueled by muscle drugs like HGH and steroids. Dr. Charles E. Yesalis says that their increasing sizes pose various health risks especially in a contact sport such as football. Football foots only a fraction of the bill when it comes to injuries, maladies, bloodshed, and even obesity. However, liability and injury lawsuits are mounting and insurers will likely to target football among big coverage areas that the consumers and the industry can no longer afford. For Cheney, he sees football reduced to a club sport or even removed from many college and school districts, and dropped entirely by insurance carriers in the relative short term. A major factor in this breakdown is drug abuse.

To end, Cheney said that young people should understand that the sport is fraught with peril and that they shouldn’t buy into the mythology. Young people should stand up about performance enhancing drugs, to tell the truth about drugs in the games they love.

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