Performance Enhancing Drugs In Sports

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“The Use of Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sports” For decades now performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs, have been prevalent in the sports world. Over the past few years leagues such as Major League Baseball and the National Football League has attempted to crack down on PED use. Still, some feel that organizations should not regulate athletes’ use of drugs to enhance their performance in their given sport. Nevertheless, many more feel that the athletes’ health may become compromised by the drugs, that the competitive advantage that PEDs give the athletes that use them is unfair, and that acceptance of PEDs would lead to increased use among athletes and the teenagers that want to emulate them. Many people want to claim that there is no real…show more content…
The only reason that players take PEDs is to gain a deliberate advantage over their opponents. As the Former President of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Richard Pound, said in a debate “remember that athletes don’t take these drugs to level the playing field, they do it to get an advantage (“Top 10 Pros and Cons”).” The point of playing sports is to showcase the skills that you have, not what some drug is miraculously allowing you to do. Coaching, training, and studying are all a part of sports. They are what make athletes have to work hard and strive to do better than the next guy. As a sports fan, I want to see naturally talented, hard-working athletes excel rather than ones who take supplements every day to achieve the same success. I want to watch NFL players make spectacular catches and bone-crushing tackles because they practiced and perfected their craft not because they can get away with taking PEDs. Leagues have been cracking down on attempts to cheat in recent years. During this past NFL Playoff season, “Deflategate” was on every sports news outlet twenty-four seven. The NFL put hours and hours of effort into trying to bring down everyone involved in a situation that they cannot even prove, without a doubt, happened. The NFL also recently took away the Atlanta Falcons 2016 fifth-round draft pick and fined the team $350,000 as punishment for pumping…show more content…
If one athlete is taking drugs to gain an advantage, others are sure to follow. It is a part of human nature to want to do what your peers are doing. Also, athletes are competing with each other to see who is better. If they have a chance to easily get the upper hand, they will take it. From there it becomes a battle to see who is going to take more than anyone else, because every guy wants to have the advantage over everyone else. Sports Illustrated reported that “half of all recently surveyed Olympic athletes admitted that they would be willing to take a drug – even if it would kill them eventually – as long as it would let them win every event they entered five years in a row (“Top 10 Pros and Cons”).” Additionally, teenagers these days love their celebrity idols. If kids find out that Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, two of the biggest names in sports, took PEDs they will think that they have to do the same in order to reach their level of success. Adolescents are very impressionable which means that athletes and celebrities that they look up to have to be positive role models. Many of the people saying that performance-enhancers in sports should be legal are the same people that would ground their child for life if they found him using
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