Jacob Myers

McLaughlin

English 12

05 February 2018

Steroids in Sports

From 1990 to now, over 240 top athletes have been caught using performance enhancing

drugs. This includes names of top athletes like Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and Sammy

Sosa. Roughly about 30 percent of athletes in college or professional sports use performance

enhancers. Elite spectator sports are supposed to be the best a clean athlete can be for the fans,

not how much of a artificial machine they can be. I agree with keeping steroid use in sports

illegal and i do not think there is any reason it should be trusted or used.

Performance enhancers are also commonly known as PED’s. They produce an increase in

the body's ability to gain and withstand large amounts of muscle growth with slim recovery time.

Performance enhancers increase the hormones in the body but largely impact the hormone

testosterone. Steroids primarily used for sports are mostly injections but steroids can be taken in

many ways.The first testing for performance enhancing drugs was executed during the 1968

winter olympics and has been a continuous process ever since.

Performance enhancing drugs are simply unhealthy. The large amount of noticeable

hormone changes in the body can lead to an outburst of rage, deep depression, early baldness,

and very severe acne. Enhancers have also been shown to dramatically increase the chances of a

stroke, heart attack, and or blood clots in the body. Another large health risk involving
performance enhancers is the way it changes the composition of the human bodies blood. Any of

these issues can lead to death at any moment.

Performance enhancers take away from the “natural talent” in sports. The reason that fans

pay to see professional level sports is due to the fact that they love seeing normal humans do

superhuman things. If fans know that somebody is going to hit a homerun or score a touchdown

every time they touch the ball, fans would stop watching. Things like Barry Bonds homerun

record that he recently achieved would have been such a better story if he would have been able

to achieve it naturally. What makes sports interesting is the different levels of skill throughout

the players and seeing what they are capable of. If all athletes took enhancers it would get boring

and people would stop caring.

Peer pressure is a very big issue concerning so many different subjects, but with

performance enhancers, it could be a bigger problem than what people think. Athletes who do

not use the drugs will eventually have to use them in order to maintain the same playing level as

their fellow athletes do so they do not have to lose their jobs. There are only so many roster spots

available on a team so when you are competing you have to be at your best and what's better than

steroids for that? Eventually athletes will want to keep getting better and will want to take even

more and wilder combinations of the drug at higher doses leading to illness or death. Children

who grow up watching these athletes use these drugs will be more prone to use them. As time

goes on the drugs become easier and easier to get ahold of.

As I am against the use of steroids in sports due to the reasons i stated there are many

people who believe enhancers should be legalized due to many reasons. Some argue that the

dangers of sports alone is about the same to that of the dangers of performance enhancers. Sports
like boxing cause people to have trouble thinking, football cripples people, and wrestling

dehydrates. All three of which cause multiple fatalities annually. Enhancers also allow other

athletes to “catch up.” It is not fair that people are born naturally more fit due to genetic mutation

so the use of enhancers allows an even playing field for all athletes to play at the same level of

competition. The legalization of enhancers would also cause a large uptick of fans in sports.

Records would be broken on a regular basis and athletes would always be pulling off heart

stopping plays to amaze the fans.

After being brought to the attention of the effects of steroid use in sports, i have come to

the conclusion that i do not agree with legalizing steroids in sports. If enhancers are not

controlled now, sports and athletes could die at a young age. The drug could also go as far as

corrupting the lives of our youth in the future. This is why my beliefs about steroid use in sports

is so strong and i do not agree with legalizing performance enhancing drugs for athletic purposes.
 Works Cited

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