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This is true if "rule" means "lightly enforced law, for the general population". However, the navy could very easily (technically, idk about politically) run a "properly used steroid" program themselves, provide the drugs, ensure they're administered very safely, and still test for use of other drugs. If done well, this might reduce steroid use in general. (good idea? dunno. just a point about the power of a sovereign).
If they can run a "properly used steroid" program, they could also run a "dangerously used steroid" program (while still calling it "properly used", of course). The only significant forces that would stop them from doing that are forces that would stop them from having a steroid program at all.
The main forces that would stop the Navy from any sort of program are political.
... huh? This is like saying that hospitals can't use fentanyl as an anaesthetic sometimes, because the only thing stopping them from doing that are what's stopping them from selling fentanyl on the street. And yet ... they do the former, and not the latter. Or ... the only thing stopping the military from conquering the US and starting a new regime are that they don't really want to (and a lot more about connections, power, socialization, etc, but w/e). And that's the same thing stopping them from doing anything else. Yet they can revise their regulations without risking a coup.
The navy could do many different things they don't do. They could simply choose to run a good program and not a bad one, like they do with every other thing they do.
I'm not making a generic argument about when you can do X. I'm making a fact-specific one. There could, logically speaking, be things that stop the Navy from using steroids to excess without stopping them from using steroids at all. I'm just not convinced that these logical possibilities exist in reality, for the actual Navy.
The mechanism the navy would use would be their ... organizational structure, discipline, hierarchy, higher-ups ordering lower-levels around. The same way they prevent crime, the same way they organize training, the same way they deploy people. If that was used to give people steroids in a performance-enhancing yet restrained physically nondamaging way - why isn't that possible?
Like, they wouldn't allow using steroids you purchase yourself any more than they do now, that'd still be tested for and not allowed. But there'd be a navy doctor that puts you on a navy steroid program, monitors your dose and progress and health, etc.
Because it's not in the Navy's interests to limit the dosages to nondamaging ones. It's in their interests to give SEALs dosages of steroids that maximize the immediate usefulness of SEALs to the Navy, even at the cost of bad long term effects. So that'll be what they do.
Is this intended to be a point about military culture specifically - that the people who run it wouldn't limit the doses? Or 'interests' generally? It's certainly possible to have a Navy that limits steroid doses despite those 'interests'. But it's very possible the current navy wouldn't.
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