DoJ throws a beanball at MLB trainers but gives players an intentional walk

Slate has a piece in which a former prosecutor argues why the major league baseball steroid scandal is different from typical drug investigations and needs to be handled differently by the DoJ, but the changes the investigators have made are the wrong ones.

Federal prosecutors customarily prosecute dealers rather than users primarily because dealers are considered more culpable. Dealers are the rich, bad-guy beneficiaries of others' weaknesses, while users are destitute victims or inconsequential saps. Dealers affect many people. Users affect only themselves.

The hierarchy of the performance-enhancing drug market for professional athletes is exactly the reverse. ... The nobody suppliers made a few thousand in pin money for supplying the juice. But the real financial gainers were the players: Drugs allowed them to cheat their way into the majors or to enhance and prolong careers worth millions of dollars. If relative culpability is to determine who is prosecuted and who is allowed to go free, it's the players who should be indicted.

The other reason federal prosecutors ordinarily go after dealers, not users, is to have a greater effect on drug markets. But if one really wanted to stop the use of steroids in baseball, which is likely to be more effective—cooperation deals with a few locker room enablers, or the spectacle of big leaguers in prison stripes rather than pinstripes?