Lack Of Performance Enhancing Drugs In Sports

Performance-Enhancing drugs are an unnatural way of changing one's body, and the effects can be life altering, sometimes better yet always, in the end, much worse. It is for this reason why major league sports have put strict rules in place suspending athletes who use these drugs; the Olympics ban these athletes for life. These drugs harm the bodies and minds of athletes, and they are banned to protect their health for their benefit and for the sports as well.

Over the years, this has been forgotten as people focus only on winning. From 1968 on, hundreds of Olympic athletes have been caught doping. PED’s are considered cheating in today’s sports. Although every athlete is determined to win, PED’s have no place in sports. When athletes resort to using these drugs, the endanger their health and their safety. An example of this is the death of Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen who died in the Olympics from the use of amphetamines which caused him to lose consciousness and fall from his bicycle to his death. Another consequence of PED use is setting a bad example and being a bad role model. In 2007 many fans were let down when Barry Bonds tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. Many fans, both young and old, looked up to Barry and were disappointed with his choices. With so many baseball players using performance-enhancing drugs today, the integrity of the game has been lost. The players who use PED’s negatively affect the players who play the game without cheating. One of the worst consequences of all for using PED’s is being suspended or banned. Since the 1960’s, the technology for PED testing has improved and more athletes have been caught, suspended or

Today’s athletes are highly paid and well-respected by many people. Once the athlete reaches the professional level, they become a role model for many. Sometimes this image culture becomes too important to the athlete, engrossing him or her to the point where the attention they are receiving is more intoxicating than the game they play.There is pressure to use performance enhancing drugs in order to maintain their societal status. They forgot about the hard work they put into getting to the highest level of sports. Professional athletes who use performance enhancing drugs should have harsher punishments than those currently in place if they use them.

“Commentators claim that performance-enhancing drugs are not right or wrong, simply another strategy to improve performance” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing Drugs). There are two main problems wrong with the use of drugs being legal. Health of athletes would drop devastatingly, and the true competition would become who gets lucky. “Some mourn the loss of yesterday's baseball heroes, while others argue that sport figures who use performance-enhancing drugs expose flaws in American culture” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing

Quite a few famous athletes have used performance enhancing drugs to improve there game.  Kenneth Jost states “ Homerun hitter Mark ‘McGwire ended his career in 2001 with 583 home runs, a record that ranks seventh in baseball history” (7).  Jost stated this to show what steroids a enhancing drug can actually help someone achieve a great achievement in baseball history.  Unfortunately McGwire was not selected for the Hall of Fame.  Jost states “Many Speculate that sports writers failed to select Mcgwire due to his connection with baseball’s steroid scandal” (7).  That quote talks about how some people react to players using performancing enhancing drugs.  Even though people may hate it, those enhancing drugs can help a player reach incredible heights.

“Why it’s time to legalize steroids in professional sports” written by Chris Smith of Forbes Magazine argues that to level the playing field of professional sports it would be beneficial to legalize the use of performance enhancing drugs. Mr. Smith’s ideals that professional sports would be a fairer, more entertaining version of itself if performance enhancing drugs were legal, is an incredibly irresponsible and impudent declaration.

Doping in sports has caused a lot of controversy throughout the years in the sports world from youth sports to the professionals. The World Anti-Doping Agency does their best to catch all the drug users but falls short with some people. This causes for an “unfair” advantage and goes against the true value of sport. It can make these players stronger and more athletic which causes more excitement for the fans to watch, more revenue for teams, and growing popularity. Using performance-enhancing drugs is banned in almost every sport, but with the allowed use of them could bring to the players and the sports teams themselves, could outweigh the negative effects of them being used in sports.

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

Performance-Enhancing drugs are substances that make people stronger, faster, and all around better athletes. Not a lot was known about PED’s until around the 1990’s when it was found that these substances gave athletes a huge advantage that used them (“New Drugs Could be the Big Thing in Sports”2013). PED’s were used in a multitude of sports that did not even make the news. Today many athletes have come have come out about their personal use of Performance-Enhancing drugs, while others want to hide the fact that they went to illegal extremes to become a better athlete. There are still lawsuits today about proving if certain athletes used these illegal drugs to improve performance. This has tarnished the image of what

Steroid use is ever present in the world of professional sports and is making its way down to the collegiate and high school levels. A large reason that PED use in professional sports is because the testing process is so poor. Many athletes, including boxing megastar Mike Tyson, have come forward after their career on their use of PED and even other drugs. Mike admitted to using urine other than his own to pass the tests. “However the existing testing program may have put too much emphasis on quantity and may have neglected quality. The above mentioned 1.76% of “findings” is in contrast to widespread belief that at least 10% of all elite athletes are doping” (Maennig, 2014, p. 1202). This emphasizes the fact that the current tests in place are more worried about testing larger

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

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.

According to Dr. Charles E. Yesalis, a professor health and human development at Penn St. University, "drug use among athletes has gone dramatically up in recent years. Athletes also are becoming more venturesome about mixing different types of drugs. One reason is that new drugs keep coming on the market, and some turn out to be of help in giving athletes a competitive edge. Sports officials feel they have no choice but to try to combat drug use in sports with every legitimate weapon at their command. They are motivated in part by concern for athletes' well being. Most performance-enhancing agents have side effects that can pose an immediate or long-range threat to health. But the officials are driven by self-interest too. If the public perceive major sports to be hopelessly drug-ridden, attendance and television viewership is likely to plummet. And thatcould lead to financial ruin for athletes and promoters alike. The monetary stakes are higher today than ever before. Many of the top athletes damned very high salaries, and a select few demand huge additional sums for product endorsement. Pro team owners, meanwhile, are constantly scrambling for more income from broadcasting and other sources to meet their massive payrolls and still turn a profit. A series of drug scandals might well cause media outlets and corporate sponsors

With the 2016 Summer Olympics just around the corner our media is capturing both positive accomplishments and negative behavior about the potential Olympic athletes and telling us everything we didn’t want to know. Doping is always a highlighted issue and we in America are familiar with it in our high profile sports culture such as NFL, NBA, and MLB but it is not just in our homeland culture. It has been internationally affecting the Olympics since its inception in 776-393BC and modern day resurrection in Athens, Greece in 1896. The Olympic Committee established a doping committee for regulation, the WADA, the world anti-doping agency, with the increase of enhancement drug use by the athletes. The World Anti-Doping Agency 's (WADA) mission is to lead a collaborative worldwide campaign for a doping-free sport.(list) Is the answer for athletes to “just say no” or should we really be looking beyond the drug. The Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger” may have added new meaning to it with “at all costs, just do it”. If we look at our own American culture, “War on Drugs”, starting under Richard Nixon in 1971, we have not seen great strides in this being the cure. I believe this issue is rooted not just in testing but in the basic human value of individuals from any country, culture, or gender. To have a governing board to seek out and banish the drug-using athletes is not going to decrease numbers in hopes of upholding the foundation of this Olympic Athletic culture that

In competitive sports, doping refers to the use of banned athletic performance-enhancing drugs by athletic competitors, where the term doping is widely used by organizations that regulate sporting competitions. “Steroids, doping and other illicit performance enhancing drugs and treatments have become the biggest scourge of professional sports leagues, and that's why it may be time they were made legal” (Smith, Forbes). The agencies regulating and controlling the use of PEDs should now legalize drugs because doping has been done since the very first sports competitions have been played. There have been bans and restrictions on taking these drugs but no matter what the rules and regulations says, athletes have always used these drugs to improve their game and will continue to do this in the future. “Athletes from all sports have made their intentions clear--they intend to use performance-enhancing substances no matter how severe the punishments, as stated by Ellis Cashmore in his source “Why should sports allow doping?”.