This is an alternate history, pondering a world where Europe was wiped out by the black plague, leaving other societies--China, India, Middle East, and Native American--to dominate the culture. It's actually written as a series of books, jumping to different times and events (Eastern Hemisphere meeting the Western, the Rennisance, etc.).

On Fridays, I often get to have lunch with my wife and daughter. They were telling me about their morning.

Apparently, they were playing Candyland, and Eddy decided to join in. They had two piles of cards: a pile to draw from, and a discard pile. Eddy was sitting by the piles.

My daughter had a bad habit in the game of drawing a card, and, if she wasn't happy with what came up, she would try to draw again.

Eddy would have none of it. When she tried to draw the second, illicit time, he would bop her hand lightly with his paw.

After a while, she realized she wouldn't be able to cheat under Eddy's watchful eye, so she gave up. Eddy got bored, and tried bopping her hand on the first (legitimate) draw. My wife pointed out she was OK.

The second time he tried to correct a proper draw, my wife told him that if he couldn't play properly, he would need to leave. Eddy got up, and curled up in the box.

The current Maillot Jaune makes a point I've said. Cycling, by kicking teams out of the most important race, stripping leaders of titles, etc, demonstrates it actually takes a stance against drugs. If you read how the testing works, including blood tests, surprise out-of-competition tests, and other tests, the seriousness of both the problem and response are there.

Other sports seem to tolerate it. The problem ranges from having a testing program that borders on optional, to the point of potentially having folks in the hall of fame as a reward for their semi-obvious drug use.