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1-Minute Overview
1-Minute Overview
Should performance enhancing drugs (such as steroids) be accepted in sports?
Should performance
enhancing drugs (such as
steroids) be accepted in
sports?
Top 10 Pros and Cons
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192 Banned Performance
Enhancing Substances and
Methods
Drug Tests Used in Sports
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About This Topic
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.
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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.
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.
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."
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 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 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 that efforts to detect and stop steroid use and other
drug use by athletes should continue or increase.
They say the effort to keep athletes from using performanceenhancing drugs is overzealous, unproductive, unfairly
administered, and bound to fail.
Last updated on: 4/13/2009 2:04 PM PST
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