The Supplement Blame Game
Here we go again! Another athlete has blamed dietary supplements for him failing a drug test. Phillies reliever J.C. Romero was suspended for 50 games after he failed his drug test. He claims the dietary supplement 6-OXO made him fail it. Romero said his nutritionist assured him the label of the supplement showed no banned supplements. The Phillies strength coach sent it in to MLB official who then tested the product to find it contained a banned substance. Romero claims he immediately stopped use of the product upon finding out about this.
ErgoPharm the manufacturer of 6-OXO claims there is no substance in their product that should result in a positive test in the MLB. I am not sure how knowledgeable ErgoPharm is of the banned list in the MLB, but if they tested it and found it contained a banned substance then I think it is safe to say that it did.
Now I am not saying that ErgoPharm did anything wrong, nor am I saying that Romero was knowingly trying to cheat. He does however have to be responsible for what he puts into his own body. With the salaries these players are making I think they can afford to have the supplements they wish to consume tested prior to taking them. I think if I were a high paid athlete, and I seen all these reports about other athletes failing drug tests because of a supplement they took, I would personally have the supplements of my choice tested to ensure I don’t get a suspension and lose millions of dollars. I think they would definitely have a case to argue if they did that. Unless of course they truly were taking steroids or other banned substances, but that is a whole other beast that I am not going to get into.
All I know is the supplement industry is continuously getting accused of being the cause of these athletes failed tests. Some may be legit and some may not, but it is giving the industry a bad name. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn out to be another case of a supplement containing a substance that isn’t listed on the label…a la StarCaps.
