MLB Players Ratify Stricter Drug Agreement

Major League players, through the auspices of the MLB Players Association, ratified on Friday amendments to the current drug policy, a little more than a week after MLB’s 30 owners unanimously approved the revisions to the collectively bargained agreement.

“When you think of where we were and where we are today it is remarkable,” Commissioner Bud Selig said last week. “You often hear me say that we have the toughest testing program in sports, and we do. It’s very comprehensive.”

It was the third time since the drug policy was collectively bargained in 2002 that the owners and union reopened it to toughen the rules. This time, the changes reflected all of the recommendations made by former Sen. George Mitchell in his report analyzing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball that was issued on Dec. 13.

Mitchell said that the current penalties — 50 games for a first positive test, 100 for a second and a lifetime ban for a third, with the right to apply for reinstatement after two years — were adequate, and that hasn’t changed. But he advised that the program should be independently administrated, be more transparent, that year-round testing should be increased, and that education be a major component.

All of those recommendations have been adopted.

The dual votes by the owners and players come at a time when the federal government could call 104 Major League players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, seeking to learn how they procured them. Plus, two of the sport’s biggest stars during the past two decades — Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens — are under pressure from the feds about their alleged drug use.

In the Mitchell Report, which was commissioned more than two years ago by Selig, Mitchell made 19 recommendations to strengthen the current program, about a half-dozen of which had to be collectively bargained.

- Barry M. Bloom, MLB.com