Steroids Affecting High School Athletes

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.

President George W. Bush says “Steroids are dangerous in sports and steroids send the wrong message: There are shortcuts to accomplishments and performance is more important than character.”

Steroid abuse has become a huge problem in professional sports today. Athletes are now using steroids to gain a competitive edge over their opponents. Also, the athletes are using the steroids to recover quickly from major injuries or surgeries. Many former superstar athletes have been caught taking steroids during the season and offseason.

Later on in the early 2000’s Commissioner Bud Selig had said that the use of steroids and PED's was almost non-existent (Zinser). He seemed to be quite right in his statements as there were only two players suspended in 2010 and only two in 2011. However, there were five players suspended in 2012 and there was a lot of unrest revolving around the Ryan Braun case. After Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were busted in 2011 and 2012 many people thought that the drug issue was finally a thing of the past (Zinser).

From the beginning of history, professional and amateur athletes have tempted to use legal or illegal drugs to enhance their performance (1). Athletes have used pharmacological agents, called Performance-enhancing drugs(PEDs), to enhance performance or to become leaner or more muscular (2). In sports, administration of drugs that are forbidden by international world anti-doping agency (WADA) is referred as doping (3). Anabolic androgenic agents (AASs) are the most popular agents that are abused by the athletes, especially bodybuilding athletes. Besides these agents, other classes of drugs such as stimulants and peptide hormones (growth hormone and insulin) are new PEDs that are abused by a lot of athletes in the different sports (1). Other than these compounds, athletes often use dietary supplements like creatine, protein, and vitamins to enhance strength and increase body mass (4-6).

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.

Athletes playing college sports often consume steroids in order to have strong muscles and not feel tired when playing a sport. Using steroids is very common for college athletes because they often tend to believe that using steroids will help them stay focused and have more energy playing their sport. In their spare time the majority of college student consume alcohol especially college football players. Around 8 percent of students consume alcohol regularly. According to The Sport Journal “college athletes consume an average of 5 and drinks per weekend” ( From 1989 to 2005 the number of collegiate student- athletes who reported drinking 10 or more drinks in one sitting during the past 12 months significantly increased”. 29% of male college

Anabolic steroid abuse has become a national concern among high school athletes. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of athletes using these performance enhancing drugs in high school almost double the number using since the 1980's. These athletes feel that steroids gives them the competitive edge that they think they need to boost themselves past the competition.

Steroids in football has become a major issue in all divisions of football rather it be high school, college, or professional. “Anabolic steroids are synthetic variations of the male sex hormone testosterone” (Anabolic Steroids). Athletes try to discover an advantage by using the illegal substance to gain strength and get ahead of other athletes faster. “The abuse of anabolic steroids by high school, college, and other ameteur athletes is a dangerous practice” (Anabolic Steroids and Sports). In this paper, the problems: steroid rage, players who use it have more injuries, and development of breast, reduced sperm count, shrinking of testicles and the solutions: increase fines when they get caught, punish these athletes the same as normal people, suspend them from games, and decrease athletes’ pay with every incident will be discussed.

“…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

No parent should have to bury their teenage son or daughter before them, especially because of a drug overdose. Sadly, this has happened to many families including the parents of Taylor Hooton, 17-year old high school athlete who lived in Plato, Texas. Hooton was a very popular student-athlete who was in his senior year of high school. In the spring Taylor would leave his mark during the baseball season. Sadly, his life ended shortly, Taylor hung himself a month after his birthday because he was dealing with depression from his excessive steroid use. Brian reports not long after Taylor’s death NIDA noticed a sharp increase in the use of steroids among male teens in the late 1990s (Monitoring the Future Survey 2008). This story is an example of how extreme situations like this can be. A story such as this one is more shocking to hear than one of a professional getting caught up in a publicized drug scandal. Even though these drugs may be helpful for the time being, enhancing the entertainment, it also weakens the values of sportsmanship and the love for the game.

Most athletes do not fully understand the consequences that come with doing these types of drugs to better themselves as athletes. Because they do not fully understand what they are doing to themselves and those around them. Steroids can be very dangerous to ones health epically when they are working themselves very hard at something. Steroids can be very hard on all the different parts of the body, however the one that they are the hardest on is the athletes kidneys. The effects on taking these steroids can be detrimental for years and years to come, because they are so hard on all of the different body functions. The attitudes of any one who decides to take these types of drugs, are changed and most of the time are very bad and may have unforeseen consequences. Stacy Beaty, a renowned orthopedic and sports medicine doctor stated while being interviewed “Athletes do not understand or care to understand what troubles they are setting themselves up for later in life.” Athletes, get very bad attitudes because they think that they are big and strong, and essentially believe they are invincible to the world. When they get this mind set many thing in their lives may begin to go wrong. Some of them will believe that they can lift a thousand pounds, while other think that they can drink and drive. The sad fact about all

The final aspect of unethical behavior is drug-enhanced performance. Steroids give a few players an unfair upper hand over others. Competitors accept that by taking steroids it will have an advantage on their livelihood and advance them to the top of their perfomrance. Fans view steroid use as a noteworthy corruptiont in sports, and the competitors that utilize the medication. There may be a admisable purpose behind steroid utilization. One illustration would be that the medication helps the competitor overcome individual injuries. Steroids help the repair process, by rapidly repairing joint tissues permitting them to come back to the diversion quickly and to contend all the more aggressively. Steroids are particularly well known with senior

Many people believe that drug use in professional athletics is not a serious problem, however it is more widespread and serious than people think. In professional athletics the use of drugs is looked upon as somewhat of a serious problem, but is also very discrete and low key. Every once in a while one might see a prominent figure in a certain sport being reprimanded for the use of some outlawed drug, however this is just one of the many who happened to get caught. Athletes today seem to find no moral problem with using performance-enhancing drugs, or in other words cheating. Also many of them feel that because they are "stars" there should be no repercussions for their illegal activity.

More and more, of our society views winning more important than itself. Success in competition brings status, popularity, and fame, not to mention college scholarships. Today’s athletes are looking for an advantage over the competition that will make them winners. Unfortunately, the drugs of today are caught up in the high stakes competition frenzy. Of this reality, teenage use of performance improved drugs is growing ever more popular. In colleges and in the professional league a lot of people are doing drugs and its ruining their health and life. Also, if some teenagers take performance drugs they are making them better than everyone else giving themselves an advantage over everyone else which is cheating, so why should they get money