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| Performance enhancing drugs have been used by athletes in all sports, from baseball and swimming to cycling and track and field. Many performance enhancing drugs are illegal, against the rules of a particular sports’ governing body, unknown and unregulated, or legal (such as caffeine and over the counter medication).Celebrity athletes like Barry Bonds (baseball), Lance Armstrong (cycling), and Marion Jones (track and field) have been under tremendous scrutiny for their alleged or admitted use of steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. The US government has formed commissions to explore drug use in sports, such as the recent 2007 US Senate Commission led by Sen. George Mitchell which investigated the “widespread” use of steroids in baseball.
The pros and cons of what appears to be relatively common use of performance enhancing drugs in sports have been debated for decades. Sports enjoy tremendous popularity world-wide, and yet this issue of drug use in sports has not yet been substantively explored in a nonpartisan manner. |
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| PRO Acceptance of Performance Enhancing Drugs | CON Acceptance of Performance Enhancing Drugs |
| PRO: Proponents argue that the harmful health effects of using performance enhancing drugs have been overstated and that the rate of injury from athletic competition far exceeds the rate of injury from steroid use.Others argue that using drugs is a normal part of the evolution of sports much like improved equipment, better training facilities, innovative training techniques, use of new technologies, healthier diets, etc., and that using such drugs carries potential risks that the athlete must evaluate for him or herself.They believe it is hypocritical for society to disdain drug use in sports while encouraging drug use for all sorts of general ailments and conditions.
They say the effort to keep athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs is overzealous, unproductive, unfairly administered, and bound to fail. |
CON: Opponents of the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports argue that athletes who use them are cheaters who gain an unfair advantage and violate the spirit of competition.They argue that using substances to improve performance unfairly alters the historic achievements of former athletes whose accomplishments were made without drugs, and that some athletes may feel almost forced to use drugs despite any health risks so they can compete on a “level playing field.”They believe drugs such as steroids are harmful to an athlete’s health and potentially fatal. They say that athletes who use drugs send the wrong message to children and may indirectly encourage them to use drugs and endanger their health.
They say that efforts to detect and stop steroid use and other drug use by athletes should continue or increase. |
“Reprinted with permission of ProCon.org”
Tags: steroids sports
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