Steroids

So, I've been thinking about the steroids issue in professional sports the past few days. Usually when I hear someone talk about A-Rod and his using I just refer that person to the sport of Athletics. The IAAF (the international track and field regulatory body) has some of the strictest rules in the sports rules when it comes to performance enhancing drugs:
First offense: two year ban, lifetime Olympic ban
Second offense: you cannot make a profit from the sport.

Granted there are still some faults with the system and some who still cheat and find ways not to get caught (hey, I personally know a few) . A two year ban is a long time in a track runner's career: a long career will be 8 years pro, a very long career will be 12, an unheard of long career will be 16 (intervals of four b/c of Olympic Games). On top of it, track and field has had several high profile athletes suffer the consequence of these rules: Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Tim Montgomery). What strikes me about this system is that even a struggling professional sport is still willing to penalize some of its leading athletes just to maintain the purity of the sport.

What's keeping baseball from actually being tough on this issue? They are trying to maintain fan base by keeping up the appearance of purity, but the longer they dance around the issue then the worse the using will become. Its time to just get tough and enact some lifetime bans. Remember Pete Rose, right? He cheated and got kicked out. Why are performance enhancing drugs different?