Drug abusing has been and still is a social disease and a nightmare for folks. Agreeing to “National Institute on Drug Abuse” the Illicit Drugs cost our society $193 billion every year (Trends and Statistics on Drugs Abuse). One form of drug abusing is doping in sports, which has many effects on sports and the society. Despite this, there are some people who are shouting out to allow doping drugs for the athletes saying this would produce an environment that would be more congruent with the reality of professional sport in the 21st Century. Ellis Cashmore, a professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University in the UK, wrote an article with the title “It's Time to Allow Doping in Sport”. “We could allow the utilization of performance enhancing substances, monitor the results and realize the whole process transparent”. However, Cashmore is mistaken because he looks out on the effects of allowing doping for athletes. I will discuss what Cashmore called the “predicted” objections to his article, which they are:
-This is cheating
-Taking drugs is wrong
-Sports stars are role models
-Fans would turn off sport
This is cheating. In Cashmore point of view he thinks that changing the regulations and raising the awareness that the permitted aids might be more dangerous than drugs can fix this problem. Let’s take the first point, which is changing the rules. If we follow this solution, we can apply this to make any crime legal. The rules have been set for each game, to draw the best out of the sport. Allowing of doping would ruin this system of rules and change what we expect from sports, which is to ascertain who has better skills. The other part of Cashmore’s solution is misleading. Medications athletes are using are des...
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.... National Institute on Drug Abuse, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. .
Diehn, Sonya. Doping's Negative Side Effects. Digital image. Deutsche Welle. Deutsche Welle, 22 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. .
"Sports Stars Are No Role Models, Say Scientists." The University of Manchester. The University of Manchester, 22 Apr. 2010. Web. 21 Feb. 2014. .
Mario Balotelli. Digital image. Hair and Sports Programming Network. N.p., 27 Sept. 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. .
Ethan Clos. Digital image. Exalted Hairstyle Blog. N.p., 9 Apr. 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. .
In American high schools across the country, many people buy, sell, and use drugs. In addition, these people influence everyone around them. On these campuses, some of the people influenced by this illegal activity are sports players. One of the sports most affected is baseball. Doping in baseball is wrong because it ruins baseball's reputation, it negatively influences the athlete's health, and the drugs are bad for young people who hold up athletes as role models.
Throughout history humans created sporting events to properly measure the talents and effort put forth by our greatest athletes. Unfortunately a recent trend has been a spark for concern within the professional sporting world which can will only lead to more controversy. This trend is the use and attractiveness of performance enhancing drugs, otherwise known as PEDs. PEDs, while just an enhancement to natural talents, is an unwarranted unnatural agent that is eroding the cohesion within the professional sporting world. These athletes who are using PEDs are doing tremendous damage to their ethical and moral integrity, as well as, the sports integrity, at which they are in. They are creating monstrous persona’s which mirrors the actions of Dr. Jekyll form the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The athlete’s means of becoming the greatest of all time, to reach new heights in their career, or simply to gain a competitive edge, is not justifiable in almost any
The use of illegal substances in sports is a trendy topic in today’s society. In the last few years a copious amount of players have been under the spotlight of substance abuse, which led to a punishment for their actions. Andrew Sullivan wrote an article in the year 2004 called “In a Drugged-up Nation, the Steroid Sports Star is King”, in which he illustrates how these “pharmaceuticals” have revolutionized sports around the world but mostly in America. These drugs have had a large influence in the overall performance of the players, even if it the use of drugs is “often denied or simply overlooked”(Sullivan 1), it will lead to a lack of judgment in what is right and what is wrong.
Abstract: Since the beginning of sports competition, athletes have always looked for some kind of an edge over their competitors. They will do whatever it takes to be one of the elite and that includes injecting supplements into their bodies to make them bigger, stronger, and faster. Steroid use is probably one of the most common drug misuses in sports competition. Athletes found that with anabolic steroids one could become a better athlete twice as fast. Not until 1975 was the drug first banned from Olympic competition because of the health risks it produced. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the sports world did not allow anabolic steroids as well. With the use of steroids no longer permitted athletes began to look for other alternatives. On the rise is two substances called creatine and androstenedione, both of which are sold over the counter. These two performance enhancers have only had minimal testing done on them, excluding the long-term effects, simply because they haven't been around long enough. Creatine and androstenedione have been said to produce results like steroids without the side effects. The truth is they do produce side effects and irregular muscle growth. By banning the use of performance enhancing drugs, just like steroids, sports competition will have a much healthier and fairer environment to participate in.
Kuipers, H. (n.d.). Anabolic Steroids: Side Effects. Encyclopedia of Sports Medicine and Science. Retrieved March 21, 2014, from http://www.sportsci.org/encyc/anabstereff/anabstereff.html
Steroid is a name given to drugs that are manufactured from testosterone, a reproductive hormone found in men. Some athletes normally use anabolic steroids because these drugs improve one’s capacity to compete and train, yielding high results. Steroids work by reducing exhaustion during training, and also reduce the length of time an athlete needs to recover from exhaustion. In addition, steroids enable the growth of tissues and muscles in an athlete’s body by instructing the body to produce extra proteins. During the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, the first rumors of athletes using steroids emerged. The problem of athletes using steroids was again reported in 1954 during weight lifting championships. The Soviet athletes recorded a very impressive performance at all levels of weight lifting. Later on, the team’s physician admitted that the Soviet athletes were being injected with testosterone in order to increase their muscle mass and strength after being questioned about how they achieved their success. WHO (World Health Organization) in 1968 was the first party to complain about incidents of athletes using steroids, these sentiments were later backed by IOC (International Olympic Committee). This paper is going to give reasons why professional athletes should not be allowed to use steroids (Yesalis 25).
The problem regarding the use of steroids in sports is that it can affect a person’s health in many negative ways. According to
Over the last few years, the use of anabolic steroids has gained the utmost prominence and has been appearing in the media much more frequently as compared to the last few years. However, the main cause for concern in today’s society is that there is a huge increase in the usage of such harmful medicines and has become utterly common in today's society. With an increase in the hormone testosterone, any individual would certainly be more aggressive and his/her personality would change by obtaining the particular medicine. Although the use of steroids can certainly improve an individual’s endurance, muscle mass, stamina and strength but they can’t improve the natural ability of an individual and can increase his skill-set (Hartgens & Kuipers, 2004).
While some athletes will argue that steroids give them an extra edge against their competition, many studies have shown that the risks of steroid use deeply outweigh the benefits, especially in adolescents. Anabolic and androgenic steroids, which are the most commonly used, have adverse effects on the entire body. The most harmful of these effects are damages to the brain. When injected or taken orally, steroids have dangerous mental effects, such as extreme mood swings, violence, steroid withdrawal, and depression leading to suicide (National Institute on Drug Abuse). This is more intensified in adolescents ("Dangers of steroid abuse for teenage boys"). These mental effects would not only impair their body but would hurt their personal life and relationships with others. These negative effects are not worth the extra "edge" an athlete receives from steroids.
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”).
Mark Sisson argues that the use of banned substances isn’t a problem because these substances keep the athletes healthy and at the top of their game. This is a topic that is popular in today’s world of competition and professional sports. The claim to allow performance enhancing drugs is difficult to make people agree with you because the media always displays them as bad and they never say the positive benefits of these drugs. Since it is difficult to get people to believe and agree with your claim by pitching a well-constructed argument. Sisson presents a good argument by using strategies of persuasion such as ethos, pathos, and logos developed by Aristotle.
It is amazing what athletes will do to achieve higher levels of performance and to sometimes get the extra edge on the competition. Most of the time people do not realize the long-term effects that result from the decisions they make early in life. This resembles the use of steroids in a person’s life.
Sport quotes. (2013, April 30). Retrieved April 30, 2013, from UNT: University of North Texas website: http://sportpsych.unt.edu/resources/athletes/31
...thlete under twenty-four hour surveillance is neither feasible nor lawful. Only when there are more accurate tests can the enforcement of drug rules and regulations be possible. As more sophisticated tests come to market, fewer drugs will escape detection. With the limited ability of current techniques to catch athletes red-handed, pressure must be put on the athletic community to reject doping. Until the athletic community refuses doping as a means to an end, little can be done to stop it from happening.
The usage of performance-enhancing drugs in sports is commonly known as Doping. Doping is banned worldwide in every sports administration and competitions and doping gives an unfair advantage to those using illegal substances, such as steroids to boost their performance. It also puts at stake the integrity of those athletes who do not use performance-enhancing drugs also known as “clean” athletes. In fact it seems that we’re now entering the era of performance-enhancing drugs within professional sports. Doping rids the true athletes of what they truly deserve and is wrong; because why should those who put in a hundred per cent of their effort, be outshone by individuals who are choosing to use substances to enhance their physical and mental abilities? Doping damages the sports industry as a whole because it has a serious physical and mental effects on the athletes, as well as damaging the idea of sportsmanship and it also breaks the trust of the fans, as they realise their idols are hypocrites.