Cortisone usage does not justify performance-enhancing drugs

I was having a conversation with some guy who was foolishly arguing for the use of performance-enhancing drugs in competitive sports. He was saying that they should be allowed, as long as the athlete uses them willingly. He also seemed to be arguing for the creation of specialized leagues in which athletes can use performance-enhancing medications freely without competing with the unsullied athletes.

Personally, I'm against the use of such drugs or the creation of these leagues, but that's a subject for another day. Instead, today I'd like to focus on the foolishness of his one particular argument. He says that cortisone is a performance-enhancing medication, since athletes can use it to keep injury pains under control. He also says that they entail a certain risk, just as anabolic steroids do. So if cortisone usage is legal, he argues, then anabolic steroids should be freely allowed as well.

That's a mind-bogglingly foolish argument. Here's why. Cortisone has legitimate medical applications for the treatment of injuries. Does this make it a "performance-enhancing drug"? In a manner of speaking, but only in the sense that it allows someone to recover from an injury more quickly. Obviously, that not at all the same as ingesting anabolic steroids, in which the objective is to gain strength more quickly and using less effort.

If someone wants to argue that anabolic steroids should be allowed, then they can't legitimately point to cortisone as a precedent. Cortisone is restricted. It requires a medical prescription and should only be used as part of a therapeutic regime. Moreover, the reasons behind its usage are completely different from those of anabolic steroids.