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Der Spiegel [in German], supported by Sky News [in English], report:
[translation mine]Ever since young people started earning money playing computer games, a discussion has arisen within Gamer circles: is E-sport, professional computer game playing, really sport? Is mouse-clicking and button pressing at high tempo easier, more challenging, or just as sophisticated as kicking a ball or swimming faster than others?
To put it plainly, whoever games professionally needs exactly as much training, passion, and talent as professionals in classical sports. And that good gamers compete in front of tens of thousands of spectators makes the world hardly better or worse than a football/soccer world championship or the Tour de France.
In any event Gamers may have to think about the issue more than they'd like. The E-Sports League (ESL), in which players of games like "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive," "Fifa," and "League of Legends" compete, has announced that they will be cooperating with the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). It is supposed to not only prevent doping, but institute concrete testing. ESL has announced that the Counter-Strike competition on August 22-23 in Cologne's Lanxess Arena that skin tests will be conducted.
Additional reporting here and here.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tathra on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:38PM
all drug testing should be illegal as a violation of privacy and a violation of 5th amendment rights. this prohibition nonsense needs to end.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @06:15PM
"All requirements to wear a shirt in public in order to get service should should be illegal, this prohibition nonsense needs to end"
Clearly you don't live in a place with many other people around you...
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday July 25 2015, @07:01PM
nice strawman, but it has nothing to do with what i said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @08:06PM
My point is this: you're confusing things that the government can't do to you (because you have no choice but to deal with the government) with things that private organizations can do to you. As a player, you can decide not to participate in leagues that do drug testing.
My argument was a parallel, not a strawman.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday July 25 2015, @08:35PM
except drug possession/use is a crime and proof of it still constitutes a crime regardless of where the evidence comes from. as for the comment about not living in a population-dense area, prohibition is more harmful [aclu.org] to everyone, especially people that never had anything to do with drugs (loss of rights and civil liberties, police militarization, ever-increasing numbers of prisons, getting your dog/baby murdered at 5am from a no-knock warrant to the wrong house, etcetc), while not wearing a shirt isn't even close to a parallel. you might be in favor of having private businesses/industries work on behalf of the police in gathering evidence, but anyone who cares about freedom finds that idea disgusting.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday July 25 2015, @06:24PM
Unless it was the government operating sports and eSports, why would it violate the 5th Amendment?
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(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday July 25 2015, @07:03PM
because a failed drug test is evidence that a crime has been committed. honestly i'm surprised that police don't go out and arrest people for failing drug tests, given the ridiculousness of the drug war, but if you think it can't or won't ever happen, you're fooling yourself. evidence of a crime is evidence of a crime, regardless of if the crime is prosecuted or not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday July 25 2015, @07:11PM
You want to participate in a sporting event, you agree to the terms. You aren't forced to compete.
At least when employers do it, it is hurting the employees' rights to do what they want outside of work and make a living.
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(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday July 25 2015, @07:15PM
oh, and i should mention that "internal possession" (ie, a failed drug test) is prosecuted [howarddefense.com] as a crime [stopthedrugwar.org] in some places. the really ridiculous part is that literally everyone [naturalnews.com] is guilty of this crime (internal possession of dmt, a schedule 1 substance) at every moment of their life.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Sunday July 26 2015, @07:54AM
It's a private org testing for legal drugs — not the US government and not for illegal drugs. Testing positive for a legal prescription drug will mean the person can't play (and thus can't create a situation where people that wish to play would feel pressured to also use the same substances), not that they'd go to jail.
Also, while drugs with proven medical uses will be legalized for that purpose (and in some rare cases like marijuana, legalized in general for over-18s) there's no way any of the Western nations are going to enact blanket legalization of all substances.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday July 26 2015, @06:42PM
that nobody has been arrested for it yet doesn't mean it won't ever happen. after all, thats one of the biggest counter-points to laws that can be potentially oppressing - the current administration may not use it as oppressively as possible, but that doesn't mean the next guy won't, its better to never let them have the capability in the first place. every year the US becomes more and more open about being a police state, there's nothing stopping them from arresting people for failing drug tests (some states already do arrest and convict people for "internal possession") because no matter how you look at it, its evidence that a crime has been committed. anyone who administers drug tests is working on the behalf of the police to gather evidence of crimes. unless you're really going to argue that, because its not the government itself doing it, that because they have private industries doing it for them, that its not a violation of rights - if that's the case, how are you enjoying the NSA and DEA bypassing the laws and constitution by having the telcos and other industries collect everything for them? since its not the government itself doing it its fair game, right?
one of the biggest problems, aside from the constitutional and legal issues, is that drug tests and the people administering them don't differentiate between current intoxication and past intoxication, as all they look for is metabolites, not the drug itself. for stuff like doping (anabolic steroids, HGH, etc), where its a long-term thing that lasts long after the substance is used, thats fine, but for the subject of this article you'd be disqualified for stuff you did up to a week ago (or month, depending on the substance) rather than just for being currently high; hell, you can pass drug tests if you get high right before taking them because theres no time for the substance to metabolize, and the metabolites are all they look for (GC/MS tests can find anything you tell it to, but they're expensive so nobody is going to pay for that, just the shitty little dip-stick tests that give plenty of false positives on all kinds of stuff; there's usually a long wait for GC/MS testing too).