This country has spent billions of dollars at all levels trying to keep people from using marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and similar drugs, and doggedly pursues the people who supply those drugs. Meanwhile, I can log onto the Internet, order my choice of anabolic steroids, and have them delivered to my house.

School systems bring drug-sniffing dogs in to check out lockers when administrators feel that marijuana or cocaine has invaded their halls. But there is no program, no effort, no real policy to stop athletes from using steroids.

Having McGwire say steroids are bad isn’t going to stop any kid from using them. If you’re in high school and you know the drugs will improve your chances of landing a scholarship or a minor-league baseball contract, you’re going to be tempted. And if playing on a national stage means everything to you, you will take steroids.

And why shouldn’t you? Kids don’t think about possible liver damage or heart damage 30 years down the road; they don’t think past next Tuesday. There is no testing in high school, so you can’t get caught.

So if Congress wants to help kids, let’s see an effort to stop the importation and manufacture of the drugs, let’s see money for high-school testing, let’s see steroids treated the same way as heroin and coke.

But don’t ask McGwire to do public service announcements. He has no credibility, not after Thursday in Washington, D.C.

I’ve always figured I’d vote for McGwire when his name shows up on the Hall of Fame ballot. After watching his pusillanimous performance, I find myself wanting to not vote for him. Not because his accomplishments don’t belong in the Hall, but because he ticked me off.

He could have said he used steroids, and I wouldn’t have had a problem. It was common back then, and baseball had no rules that said players couldn’t do them.

Throw out everyone who cheated to succeed and you’ve got to toss Don Sutton’s plaque in the dumpster next to Gaylord Perry’s. Whitey Ford could throw a mean cut ball, so he’s got to go, too.

Amphetamines are illegal drugs, too, and if you included people who used them regularly, you’d have to empty the Hall of Fame. Rather than ask who in the past 40 years took the ballplayer’s next favorite drug after caffeine, you’re better off asking who didn’t take “greenies,” as the pills were known.

I’m not smart enough to decide which form of cheating is okay and which isn’t. But I am smart enough to spot a fraud. And McGwire is just that. He sealed the deal when he couldn’t even answer a simple question about whether using steroids is cheating. He said he wasn’t qualified to address the issue.

I’m beginning to think he’s not qualified for Cooperstown, either.

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