Essay on Legalize Performance Enhancing Drugs

Steroids are a hot topic of debate and controversy in the world of athletes and sports. Steroids fall under the umbrella of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and are a dark cloud that have been hovering over the sports world for a long time. In the world today, steroids are the most relevant in major league baseball. Many baseball players, such as Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, and Mark McGwire, just to name a few, have ruined their reputations because of steroids. There are repercussions for PED use in major league baseball, which have cut down on the substance abuse by players but have nowhere near eliminated the problem.

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

Since Major League Baseball all-star Ken Caminiti openly admitted to Sports Illustrated to have used steroids during his career, steroid use as a muscle and performance enhancer has been uncovered and become a big issue Major League Baseball is wrestling with. The “ongoing and delicate subject, baseball’s dirty, little secret that is no secret anymore,” is a huge and growing problem (Curry B20). Now that light has been shed on the issue, critics are beginning to realize the magnitude of this problem and do not like it. Steroids are a cheating virus that is spreading quickly. Users cheat other players, themselves, the fans, and the game itself. Action must be taken to rid Major League Baseball of this virus

For many years sports have played huge roles in human’s everyday lives. From entertainment, political, financial and to actually competing in them. The task for the sportsmen or women, especially in the top rank, is to beat the other competitors and get a good result from it. Here there is a high amount of pressure on many athletes coming from the media, coaches, themselves etc. They have the wanting to do well and achieve their goals and aims so much that some of the athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs. Obviously training for competition is the main thing to do but using drugs is another helper to succeeding. So, to their way of thinking, doping does not seem like cheating it just seems like

Abstract:  With the increase of competition has also come the need to become bigger and stronger than the opponent.  The use of steroids among athletes has caused the focus of the game to change.  No longer does an athlete want to win by doing their best, but they want to become bigger and have an advantage over the opponent.  Ultimately, all athletes feel that they need to use performance-enhancing drugs to compete at the same level. Despite all of the warnings and information on performance-enhancing drugs, athletes continue to use them and overlook the potential health risks associated with steroids.

Former Notre Dame Football coach, Knute Rockne, once said, “Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure,” (“The Future of Steroids”). The importance of winning in sports and being the greatest has grown immensely. This unquenchable desire to be stronger, faster, and more agile than the opponent, has caused many athletes to stop at nothing to be the best; this pressure has caused athletes to take banned and illegal substances known as performance-enhancing drugs (Performance-enhancing drugs) to achieve maximum strength and speed. The use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs in sports has been obvious to many spectators and sports enthusiasts for quite some time now, and athletes who have been found guilty of taking

“…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.

Student athletes should be drug tested before they’re allowed to play because they might cheat,as the drugs could make them faster and

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

“I want to be like Alex Rodriguez when I grow up. I want to play for the New York Yankees and be able to hit the baseball like him. I want to like A-Rod,” says a young six-year-old boy. As children grow up they look to professional athletes as role models, they dream about being like them, but what image are these athletes setting if in order to perform, there injecting and popping drugs into there body? Performance enhancement drugs are, drugs used by athletes to enhance their abilities in the performance of their sport. Often the drugs mean illegal or unethical use of these substances (Medical Dictionary). Performance enhancement drugs have been a major topic of sports over the past decade. Many athletes over the history of performance enhancement drugs have been caught with the illegal substances within their system, in which some athlete’s stories were more public then others. The health effects of doping, which is an act or instance of giving a narcotic, usually a steroid, to an athlete to unfairly boost performance in a competition (Dictionary), are very negative and can have major impact on the athlete not only during performance, but also later on in life (Allan Stensballe 368). Athletes of all ages are turning to performance enhancing drugs as a way of improving their performance by giving them that little extra edge. This isn’t only unethical, but it’s a form of cheating and a form in which is harmful to the human body.

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.

The use of performance-enhancing steroids in sports is forming a problem. The sports that they play end up being cheated by these frauds. This is a disgusting epidemic. For example, “The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recently estimated that over half of a million 8th through 10th grade students are abusing AAS, and that many high school seniors do not believe their use constitutes a health risk” (steroidabuse.com). The problem exists in professional sports and below. Steroid use in sports is becoming more common and is dangerous to the games that it cheats.

Is it time to say yes to Steroids in professional sports or keep them out? One of the two articles that I chose to use for this paper is, “Is It Time to Say Yes to Steroid in Professional Sports?” written by Raymmar Tirado (2014) of the Huff Sports Division. The second article is, “Why Steroids Have No Place in Sports” written by April Ashley (2010) from Marquette University Law School. These articles pose two different points of view when it comes down to the use of all Performance Enhancing Drugs in Professional Sports.

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