Earlier this week, the Orange County Register reported that numerous American athletes tested positive for certain banned substances, but were nevertheless cleared to compete in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, including Carl Lewis. The substances were commonly found in over-the-counter medications, not steroids, so the U.S.O.C. looked the other way, even though, by the letter of the law, those athletes should have been banned from competing.

The article speaks to what was seemingly a more innocent time, when Sudafed was viewed as an appropriate athletic stimulant, and so long as an athlete wasn't caught juicing himself, the powers-that-be would look the other way. For sports fans who remember Rick DeMont, the Olympic swimmer who was stripped of a gold medal in 1972 after the asthma medication he was cleared to take triggered a positive result on a drug test, it has been easy to take the side of the athlete when it comes to the performance-enhancing effects of ordinary, over-the-counter medication. It's an awfully slippery slope, however. [link via Off-Wing Opinion]

UPDATE: The LA Times followed up this story the following week, and concluded that the trace amounts of ephedrine in Carl Lewis' system were so minute that he would only have been suspended if it were proven he had intended to take performance-enhancing drugs. Since there was no other evidence he had, his exoneration by the USOC was appropriate.