The decision by baseball to ban both certain steroid-like substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency list and amphetamines due to Congressional pressure is being lauded in most editorials. However, the methods used and the actions taken by Congress have grave and serious consequences for existing labor law, the health of our student athletes and the future of effective employee assistance plans.

The House Government Reform Committee takes great pride in its pressuring of the Office of the Commissioner and the Major League Baseball Players Association to agree to a stricter drug testing program. This was accomplished through its continuing threats to pass onerous legislation to address the issue of steroids and supplement use in baseball. But, in its zeal to force the re-opening of a duly negotiated collective bargaining agreement, Congress has set a dangerous precedent for any worker whose contract is covered by National Labor Relations Board.

Do the Democrats on the committee believe that any private management/union labor agreement can and should be shredded by Congressional fiat? Can we pick and choose which contracts can be abrogated at whim?

Congress’s desire to ban certain substances for use by athletes but not for the average American citizen is in direct conflict with one of the supposed congressional rationales for the hearings, which was to address health issues related to vitamins, supplements, and steroids. With this list of banned substances, we have just provided a roadmap to young athletes and their unscrupulous parents. Many of these enhancing chemicals are found in over-the-counter products that can be purchased in your local drug store, vitamin shop, or online.

The decision to ban certain chemicals due to their performance enhancing effects for athletes while allowing them to be readily available to the general public proves that the pressure tactics employed by Congress on the Major League Baseball office of the commissioner and the Major League Baseball Players Association were political in nature and not part of any sincere effort to prevent a national pandemic of juvenile health issues related to drugs.

Recent actions by government law enforcement personnel are also extremely disconcerting. This week, the government once again tried to seize and use two-year-old urine and blood tests from hundreds of major league baseball players, even though they only had a search warrant for the samples belonging to 10 players. A government attorney, Erika Frick, told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that prosecutors are entitled to the samples even if their seizure was a “callous disregard” of the Constitution.

If this action is allowed to stand, federal agents and local police could go to any hospital or insurance company, leaf through the files, and take positive drug tests to institute a criminal case. These random searches would not only violate the privacy of individual medical records, they would negatively affect the efficacy of employee drug-assistance programs and people seeking rehabilitation for chemical addictions.

If the confidentiality of records is not assured, a person with a chemical addiction to an illegal substance would be less likely to come forward and obtain treatment for their illness, if there were a chance they might lose their job and serve time in jail. They would remain addicts, to the detriment of their health, their livelihood, and their family. Once again, government actions related to the investigation of athletes would generate negative health effects.

As we investigate performance-enhancing substances, we are supposedly concerned about the validity of past statistics and numbers related to baseball. If the distortion of numbers is important, will we also be concerned about the effects of adderall and atavan, which are regularly given to children to enhance their Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and school test results? Just because 40,000 people aren’t watching, isn’t this also a distortion of records that causes parents and children to feel that they also have to put their children’s health at risk because others are “cheating”?

It is not asking too much for Congress to simply apply common sense and the laws of our country evenly and equitably. If you ban a substance for one citizen, you should ban it for all. If it is legal for any citizen, it should be legal for all.

Mr. Tufts is a former pitcher for the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals (1981-83).