Why Athletes Should Be Tested For Drugs…
With Major League Baseball starting anew, the headlines return to the Mitchell Report and visions of The Steroids Era are renewed in everyone’s minds. This year the league will have to work a little harder to test its athletes for illegally juicing up and to restore their credibility. The whole scenario has become a controversy. Some baseball fans wonder why is it that the athletes have to be tested for drugs? If it helps the players score big, why shouldn’t they take drugs?
Many steroids and other performance-enhancement drugs can be used legally to help treat people suffering from serious ailments. When someone healthy takes them, it is true that their muscles and bodies may become superhumanly strong, but it’s not without a price. The side-effects from using these drugs can be short and long term, and they can include serious conditions like liver and heart damage. For teens, the risks are most high, because they can stop bone growth and cause other hormonal complications during the most critical growing period of a teenager’s lifecycle.
Despite the health consequences, there is also the ethical dilemma. Using drugs is against the rules of the game, it’s illegal, and it showcases the players as poor role models for the young adult fans. Athletes, in any sport, should be proud to play clean and to win thanks to their own hard work.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:20 pm
The fact that the “appropriateness” of steroids in athletics is even debated says a lot about our society’s views on drug abuse. Steriods are illegal performance enhancing drugs. If we argued that certain illegal psychotropic drugs helped us perform better socially, would that make drug abuse more acceptable?
April 1st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Athletes today seem to be seen as Celebrites but when we defend their use of steroids and other performance-enhancement drugs, what are we telling ourselves or the younger athlete who justify they can score big points? This has been a pattern in our society to not be honest or holding themselves accountable to the rules of the game. It has become more then a sport played with fairness for all, for the athlete to show up and work hard to achieve their full potienal as a player would be the honest and right thing to do.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I agree with Marie. With the professional sport leagues paying millions of dollars to the highest achieving athletes (not to mention the millions more in endorsements))- why wouldn’t every player act to give themselves an edge over their opponents? I certainly would.
Another problem is parents. Many parents take their kids down to Nogales (or other border town) pharmacies to get steroids for their athlete kids. Sometimes it’s because they believe mild steroids aren’t harmful- other times they are so bent on their kids making it to the top that they don’t care about the future consequences of steroid use.
As for rules? Let’s be real- most (not all) athletes don’t care about rules that aren’t enforced or noticeable (most coaches don’t either) if breaking them means winning. The latest MLB scandal shouldn’t be any more surprising than government money-laundering, corrupt law enforcement, or medical malpractice…