Essay On Performance Enhancing Drugs

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Maria Sanchez Thomas Thrasher English 100 13 November 2014 Professional Athletes and the Usage of Performance Enhancing Drugs Alex Rodriguez “A-Rod”, baseball player on the MLB team New York Yankees has been in the news headlines not necessarily for good reasons. Apparently, A-Rod was discovered to be using performance enhancing drugs.The drugs may have boosted Rodriguez performance in the field, but once he got caught by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA); it had an unfavorable effect on his career. Now he is suspended from playing forty-nine games (Dickey). There are many advantages and disadvantages to the legalization of performance enhancing drugs. Some advantages include improving game performance, increasing health regulations, a …show more content…

If an athlete is caught using a performance enhancing drug, they will lose everything that they have worked for and risk their entire career. If this happens, a sports team can lose an influential player. Another disadvantage to the use of performance enhancing drugs is that it is unfair to the athletes who are not using them. If team players see that another player is gaining fame from the use of performance enhancing drugs, they may be more likely to try them when they may have never even considered it. A study done by Sports Illustrated asked a numerous amount of athletes if they would take performance enhancing drugs if there was no risk of being caught. Ninety-eight percent stated that they would take the drugs.They later asked the same question, but added on to that statement that they would also win every single game for five years but die immediately after. Even after the conditions of a short life, more than fifty percent said they would still take performance enhancing drugs (Wick). These statistics show that athletes are willing to do anything in order to be the best athletes and have the desired fame that the best athletes obtain. This goes to show how the use of performance enhancing drugs can be negative for athletes and sports

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