PED In Sports

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

A number of prominent athletes have recently experienced a 'fall from grace,' because of the revelation that they used performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is Lance Armstrong. In an advertisement for Nike that his former sponsor now no doubt regrets, Armstrong is shown asking the viewer "what am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day." Professional cycling is often cited as one of the sports in which doping is most endemic to its subculture, however a number of professional sports have been embroiled in drug scandals. Because of the many revelations about the number of baseball players who used steroids to get their record-breaking statistics, the 1990s are often called the 'steroid' era of baseball. The Olympic track and field star Marian Jones was stripped of her medals, after finally admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (Lardon 2008). "Despite the health risks, and despite the regulating bodies' attempts to eliminate drugs from sport, the use of illegal substances is widely known to be rife. It hardly raises an eyebrow now when some famous athlete fails a dope test" (Savulescu, Foddy, & Clayton 2004).

“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

Performance enhancers are very prominent in professional sports today. A lot of players are facing suspensions and other penalties for using them. The sport that gets scrutinized the most for this is Baseball. Many former users in the MLB (or formally the NABBP) have come out saying that they were using these drugs while playing. Some of these players are Jorge Sosa, Antonio Bastardo, and the famous Alex Rodriguez. Although these drugs have been prohibited, players are still finding ways around the tests which is why in some other countries they are legal so that no one player can have an unfair advantage.

The MLB has also had many changes to the consequences players would receive for getting caught using PED’s, again at the beginning consequences were quite lenient, and now are very strict. The consequences for getting caught ranged from counseling for a first offense to getting suspended for the entirety of the year for a fifth time offense, when testing was first installed in 2003. If a player repeated the use of the drug, the player could be suspended from anywhere between 15 days and a year, with a fine ranging from $10,000 to

PEDs aren't ruining sports or American culture as many people would like to believe. In reality, because PEDs in sports has become commonplace over the years, revenues have increased in the trillions of dollars (Adams et al 2004). The one thing that all the trillion plus dollar major sports have realized is that fans want to see larger than life people doing larger than life things. Fans want to see 40-yard dash times shattered each year at football combines. They want their linemen all to bench press over 500 pounds (Adams et al

The desire to compete — and win — is as old as history itself. From the beginnings of sport, athletes have sought out foods and potions to turn their bodies into winning machines. As early as 776 BCE, the very first Olympic games, there are records of attempts to increase testosterone levels (“Steroid Abuse in Sports”). Ancient Greek wrestlers ate vast amounts of meat to gain muscle mass, and Norse “Berserker” warriors took hallucinogenic mushrooms before battle. The first competitive athletes to be charged for doping, however, were swimmers in 1860s Amsterdam. Doping of all kinds, from caffeine to cocaine to anabolics quickly spread to other sports (“Anabolic Steroids, a Brief History”).

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

Different sports organizations such as Professional Cycling, NFL and NBA just to name a few, have all been hit with players doping. We will only focus on the NBA and NFL and how their organizations deal with the issues.

Athletes will do whatever it cost to win. Taking PEDs allows users to reach a new level to compete at. A great sport where people see this growth but don’t even notice is in American Football. Robinson(2017) says, “The Associated Press reported that in 1970 there was only one 300-pound lineman player in the NFL. By 1990 there was over 94 players over 300-pounds, and in 2015 preseason only 4 players weighed under 300-pounds.” These numbers don’t lie; yeah training programs are superior to what they were, but with the increase in pounds so quickly can only come from PEDs. Why wouldn’t they take PEDs, the benefits are major and make an athlete compete at a higher level. It’s not just football athletes who can benefit though, Thomas Hicks used them to allow him to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Alex Rodriquez used PEDs to allow him to become one of the most known baseball players known to play. “Rodriquez was spending nearly $12,000 a month for his supplies” (McPherson, 2016). It sounds expensive, but he was going to his teams own pharmaceutical store purchasing them from team doctors. These drugs

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

A historical timeline about the drug use in sports provides us an inside look of how PED’s evolved. According to this timeline, ancient Greek Olympian professionals competed for huge cash prizes, as well as the olive wreath, the prize at the ancient Olympics from 776 to 393 BC. Evidence suggests that Greek athletes feasted themselves on meat, which was not a normal dietary staple for the Greeks (procon.org). Not only did they eat animal hearts and testicles in search of potency, they also experimented with herbal medications. While cheating is not acceptable in the modern world, back then it was absurd to not take advantage of it because there was no testing available. This form of PEDs remained constant until the 1900s when they were used in the modern era of the Olympic

For example, "If a man who normally produces about seven milligrams day of natural testosterone takes 100 milligrams of steroids daily, he exposes himself to a ten-to-fifteen- fold increase in testosterone. If a women who normally produces point three milligrams a day and takes 100 milligram of steroids a day exposes herself to more than 300-fold increase in testosterone beyond the normal level for women" (Yesalis and Cowart 63). Through PED's, athletes can show their best performance without any limitations of their body slowing down or running out of energy. However, consuming too many doses of PED's will lead to serious damage to the body and may lead to several life-threatening problems in the future. For example, Manny Ramirez, helped the Red Sox stop the losing streak for the past eighty-six-years (Ramirez). No doubt Ramirez is an amazing player, however he did admit to using PED and he was suspended for it. Ramirez did not take the 100-game suspension, but instead, he decided to leave baseball. With this reason being, no one can see him play anymore and see his amazing talent on the field, which is not benefiting the

‘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

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