Decriminalizing Performance Enhancing Drugs

Performance-enhancing drugs (PED 's) have been an issue for many decades now for the medical and sports field. Olympic and professional athletes have been using them to gain an upper hand on the competition, but some may ask if it 's really worth it? Studies show that performance-enhancing drugs have been proven to negatively affect the health of athletes who take them. Simply put, performance-enhancing drugs could either improve athletic performance or can be extremely dangerous, in certain situations, deadly. There have been strict rules and drug testing in the professional sporting organizations, as well as in world competitions. For example, in the summer of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, in two of the

The Intelligence Square U.S. held a debate about whether or not the government’s rules on performance enhancing drugs should be ban in professional sports. For the debate they had Radley Balko, Investigative Journalist, Norman Fost, Professor of Pediatrics and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, and Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford argue for the motion. They argue the fact that the medicines we take on a daily basis from the pharmacy are also performance enhancers. This goes back all the way to the Romans who once used herbs to improve themselves for battle, making them believe that the only exception that separates this from steroids is that it is illegal. On the other hand, you have

These days it seems as society is constantly being faced with Ethical Dilemmas. Whether it is normal everyday citizens, actors, business executives, and even athletes. The way that every person deal with ethical dilemmas is by relying on their worldview. The world of professional sports is a very tough and competitive place. It is full of top level athletes that are masters in their respective sports and the struggle that they all face is to be better than everyone else. With all these athletes working hard and looking for new ways to better themselves, some take the easy way over the right way. In this paper, the ethical dilemma of performance enhancing drugs being used in sports will be addressed

Knowing wrong from right seems to be a harder and harder concept for people to grasp. As the American culture wanders farther and farther from a Christian Worldview, so it seems America loses its grip on morals and ethics. In this paper, there will be an exploration of ethics in regards to performance enhancing drug use in athletes. Performance enhancing drugs should continue to be banned due to health risk factors, the element of cheating and abuse of the athlete 's body.

“…medical researchers believe that between 1 and 3 million youths and adults have taken anabolic steroids in one form or another specifically to enhance their looks or athletic performances,” stated Nuwer (Nuwer, 61). As astounding as these figures are, the number of performance drug users is steadily increasing. With this progressively increasing numbers, it is projected that millions more will use steroids in the immediate future (Newer, 61). Athletes have always sought an advantage in competition even if ignoring the law and their health if necessary. Using drugs of any sort to facilitate an athlete’s athletic ability should be illegal. The use of performance enhancing drugs is not only detrimental to the user but it also creates an

Do you want to want to become the peak athlete that you know your body is capable of? Well, this paper will not do that for you, but it will tell you how, and it will tell you why it should be legal to do so. Doping in sports is one of the most extensive debates within the realm of athletics. Whether it be injecting anabolic steroids, consuming them, or blood doping, athletes will do drugs. Doping has no effect on the viewership of the sport. Athletes can always find ways to cheat the system, and trying to prevent the use seems impossible. The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) should be legalized, as long as it is allowed under medical supervision.

The most commonly discussed issue in sports of the 21st century is the use of performance enhancing drugs by professional athletes. Over the past four years, it has been nearly impossible to turn on the television without hearing something about athletes and these drugs. From former National League MVP Third Baseman Ken Caminiti's admission of steroid use in an issue of Sports Illustrated (Verducci, 2004) to 2006 Tour de France Champion Floyd Landis being stripped of title due to a failed doping test (Blue, 2006) virtually every sport is involved. Are performance enhancing drugs a substance that threatens the very existence of professional sports, or are they the future? Perhaps the issue

Robert Simon, Ph.D., in his book The Ethics of Sports, reports that “world-class athletes are taking steroids at dosages so high that it would be illegal to administer them to human subjects in legitimate medical experiments” (Simon et al. 87). The pressure these athletes face is a type of coercion known as the coercion of unrefusable offers (Radcliffe-Richards 7). Coercion of unrefusable offers in sports occurs when an undesirable proposition (PEDs) has benefits that are so irresistible that element of voluntariness (i.e. consent) vanishes and the athlete has no choice but to accept that offer. Coercion limits the freedoms of athletes because they feel as if they have no choice but to take PEDs even if they do not want to take PEDS if they wanted to compete with other players of that sport: “either use steroids and risk harm, or cease to be competitive” (Simon et al. 97). The problem with the coercion of unrefusable offer in sports is that it makes competing in a sport unfair to the athletes who do not want to take PEDs because their naturally earned talents cannot compete with the chemically altered talents of athletes using

The reference explains how performance enhancing drugs diminish the idea of participation and promote ONLY winning, ruins the ‘spirit of sport’, pose severe health risks, promote unhealthy and dangerous behaviour, and questions the ethical issues of drug advertising/ sponsorship if doping were allowed in

A culture that would allow the use of performance enhancing drugs would have a devastating effect on the health of professional, collegiate, and young developing athletes. The USADA found that nearly 90% of U.S adults agree that professional athletes have a responsibility to be positive role models for young people. It was further found that U.S adults agree by a wide margin that the personal conduct of professional athletes is just as important as their athletic accomplishments. As Thomas Peterson points out: when a professional athlete engages in cheating activities such as performance enhancing drugs it encourages young athletes who look up to them to use drugs in a way that would be harmful (Petersen, 2010). This is further supported by

Doping has widely become known as the use of banned substances and practices by sports personnel particularly athletes in an attempt to improve sporting performances. No sensible fan of sport today denies the prevalence of drugs in virtually every major sport, yet none would argue they can ever be eliminated completely. Money alone would seem to guarantee that much. High profile athletes today are competing for high stakes, not just millions, but dozens of millions. The fear of losing everything career, opportunity, contracts, name, fame, and money is pushing more sportsmen all over the world to use performance enhancing drugs, mainly

In the world of sports, performance enhancing drugs has been a subject of great concern. Whether it was the “steroid era” of Major League Baseball in the 1990’s or the Lance Armstrong controversy, there has been a concerted effort to clean up the sports industry. But, according to the journal “Why we should allow performance enhancing drugs in sport” the crusade against drugs in sport has failed, rather than fearing drugs in sport, we should embrace them (Savulescu, 2004).

This is a material world promoting material values, thus meaning that it should not be surprising to see individuals being willing to do everything in their power in order to make profits. Or should it? The sports community today is troubled by a series of athletes who have yielded to society's pressures and abandoned their principles with the purpose of taking performance enhancing drugs. It is difficult to determine if it would be normal for the masses to judge these individuals, concerning that they are actually one of the reasons for which these people have come to consider taking performance enhancing drugs in the first place. However, the only ones who can judge them are other hard-working sportspersons who have stood by their principles and who respect the idea of sport in general.

‘Olympic track star Marion Jones was sentenced in a federal court to six months in prison.’ (Kelly and Rao, 2008) The reason why Jones was guilty is because of the use of performance enhancing drugs since 1999. More and more famous athletes prove to have used banned drugs to enhance their performance. At the same time, the role that the anti-doping agency is more and more important in the world wide games, such as Olympic Game, Tour de France. Nowadays, whether the performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) should be legalized has sparked a heated debate. However, the use of PEDs is morally wrong and it should be banned in sports. This essay will demonstrate three main points which explain the

The use of performance-enhancing drugs goes against an unwritten code of ethics for sports because if the athletes are caught taking the enhancers they can harm not only themselves but the team too, they give the person taking the enhancers an extra edge that nobody else has and it can damage the person that is taking the enhancer’s body. The people that would be the most interested in this paper are high school, college, and professional coaches, along with all the players and their families. Depending on what sport the athletes plays and what area of the world the athlete plays in depends on the minor changes of the unwritten code of ethics for sports. The basis of the unwritten code of ethics for sports is that the player does what is