Should Anabolic Steroid Use Be Accepted in Sports?

“The tested and untested categories are great, because some people don’t want to take steroids [and are in the drug tested category]. Some people do want to take steroids [and are in the untested category]. Let’s see how far we can take the human body with a bit of a chemical tweak. Let’s see how far we can take the body naturally. Let people have their options, don’t take it away from them…

A lot of people are using [steroids] that just don’t need to. You don’t need to use gear to be 12 stone [168 pounds] with a six-pack. Honestly, you just have to work harder. If you want to be a powerlifting freak, then you’re probably going to have to use them. If you’re a very competitive person, you’re going to do what it takes.”

“In theory, banning doping prevents athletes from taking unfair shortcuts and keeps sports on a level playing field. In reality, these bans have done less to protect fairness and punish rule-breakers and more to discourage athletes from reaching the highest levels of success…

How many people would have cared about the Tour de France without Armstrong’s stunning feats? Before failing a drug test in 2006, Shawne Merriman was in highlight reel upon highlight reel during his 2005 season as the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year. Who can deny the excitement of 1998’s record-breaking MLB home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa? Recently busted Alex Rodriguez is a career .300 hitter with 647 career homeruns, a 14 time all-star, a 3 time AL MVP and a World Series Champion.

We can continue the trend of hand-wringing and hysteria, with one doping scandal after another, further embarrassing the field of professional athletics – or we can legalize and regulate performance-enhancing drugs to the benefit of sports and sports fans alike. Let’s do ourselves and our athletes a service by allowing them to perform at their best.”

“Steroids, doping and other illicit performance enhancing drugs and treatments have become the biggest scourge of professional sports leagues, and that’s why it may be time they were made legal.

The primary reason why performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are outlawed in professional sports is that they give users an unfair advantage over the rest of the field. Various professional sports leagues have attempted to set a level playing field by testing for drug use and suspending those found guilty. It’s a noble effort, but it’s clearly not working… So if we really want to level the playing field, it may be time to head in the other direction: legalize performance enhancers.

Not only would the playing field suddenly be even for all players, it would be at a higher level. A huge part of watching sports is witnessing the very peak of human athletic ability, and legalizing performance enhancing drugs would help athletes climb even higher. Steroids and doping will help pitchers to throw harder, home runs to go further, cyclists to charge for longer and sprinters to test the very limits of human speed…

Athletes are going to take steroids and turn to doping regardless of the rules. Drug use in cycling is seemingly as old as the sport itself, and baseball players have tried to cut corners wherever possible, whether it be with spit balls, corked bats, stimulants or steroids. It doesn’t justify the actions of Armstrong, Cabrera or Colon – they knew the rules and chose to break them – but the current system has continually failed to establish a level playing field for the world’s most talented athletes. Legalizing steroids, doping and other performance enhancers would finally set an even bar, and that would just be the first of many benefits.”

“[W]e allow people to do far more dangerous things than play football or baseball while using steroids. We allow people to bungee-jump, to ski on advanced slopes, to cliff dive. To eat marbled meat or ice cream pie every day if they want. I don’t think we want to go down a path in which we restrict and even criminalize behaviors just because they have health risks. And steroids are so low on the list of drugs or diets that cause serious harm I don’t understand why we would start there.”

“When athletes compete at the highest levels, all that matters is winning. The environment can become cultlike, in that normal standards no longer apply…

I don’t blame the athletes like Marion Jones for juicing their performance with a little extra oomph. She’s caught up in her sport; she needs that little somethin’ somethin’ to maintain her edge. Everyone else is doing it. If you shot me up with whatever she had, I wouldn’t be the fastest woman alive. It was still her out there on that track.

If the athletes are willing to risk their health – which many do already without taking steroids – let them. It doesn’t ruin it for me.”

“Home runs are hit only because the player has great skill at swinging a bat at a little ball coming at him at over 90 mph. Most of the folks reading this could take steroids all their lives and still not be able to hit that little ball.

If someone wants to earn millions of dollars being a professional baseball player, he may feel pressured to use steroids to make himself the best that he can be. If he doesn’t want to take those health risks, he can take his chances or go into some other line of work. Nobody forces anyone to be a baseball player. That is true for guys who fight oil well fires, tame lions, or do dangerous stunts for the movies, as well.

In short, if the public wants to see 500 foot home runs and there are young men willing to run the health risks associated with taking substances that allow them to hit those home runs and make millions of dollars, why not cut the pretense of public outrage and let them do it?”

“There is simply no plausible case, ethical or practical, to be made for prohibiting [steroid] use, not in law, not in sports-organization codes…

It is supposed to be a basic tenet of any society daring to call itself ‘free’ that it is not to regulate conduct that is not risky to those not willingly accepting the risk…many would say that it ought not even to regulate conduct that is risky unless that risk is material.

The various ‘risks’ ignorantly (or deliberately) assigned to [steroid] use are by and large specious. In sum, there are medical risks, but of nothing remotely like the variety or severity commonly suggested. In reality, they are unlikely, usually minor, and almost universally reversible.”

“Doctors will tell me that steroids are dangerous. Acne and ‘roid rage’ are not the only side-effects. Tumors and jaundice are always a possibility, and there is death. Of course, that doesn’t stop doctors from prescribing them for patients for things ranging from an infection all the way up to cancer. They are hormones and, just like anything else, are bad when used too much. So why not control it?

If a baseball player has a doctor who says it is okay for them to use steroids, who is MLB to stop them? Those who buy it without a prescription (or obtain prescriptions from vets and other weird doctors) should be prosecuted by the law and not MLB. Other than that, let the doctors continue to make us better athletes. They’ve been doing it forever. No sense in stopping now.”