2 popular athletes, 2 drugs and 2 different reactions

By now, you have probably all heard about the photo of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana. This has landed Phelps in some major trouble including a 3 month ban from swim competition by USA swimming as well as the dropping of some sponsors such as Kellogg (Ouch, that has to hurt. It must feel like Tony the Tiger just punched him in the ...). While everyone is very disappointed that Michael did such a thing, especially when he is a role model for young kids, he technically didn't do anything illegal in terms of prohibited performance enhancing drugs. In fact, pot should probably be considered a performance decreasing drug and Michael should get more praise for winning 8 golds while high (of course this is only speculative. Could you imagine how pissed off the other athletes would feel if they found out he was high while owning them in the pool?) Anyway, news just broke today that in 2003, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for anabolic steroids (that's not to say A-Rod doesn't smoke marijuana as well. In fact, this would probably explain his dating Madonna). You'd think this would be a lot more serious since it actually involves a banned substance but MLB is doing everything to protect him. When asked, the league mentioned that in 2003 there was no penalty for using performance enhancing drugs. Also, the report was supposed to remain confidential and due to this, they could not confirm whether he was or was not in it. I'm not mentioning this to criticize either of these scenarios. It just looks like the theoretically less serious offense is going to get the practically more serious punishment.