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In some articles they're implying If doping In sports should just be legalized because there are so many athletes around the world who does this to get an advantage.Also because the rate of getting caught is very slim.I somewhat agree that certain drugs should be legalized to put on a show because even the athletes that never did them ad are natural are doing them now to compete against the others.It should be legalized to a instinct but back to my claim those drugs are harmful to the body.They will make you perform well but the affects are deadly and you can’t do anything to change that because its already in your body.

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Should performance-enhancing drugs be legalized? Our experts debate.

YES

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.

Lance Armstrong, the face of doping to many, is an example of the flawed logic behind bans. Yes, Armstrong had an advantage because of his illegal activities. But is it really an unfair advantage if the majority of your competitors are also using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs)? According to Business Insider, 20 out of 21 top three Tour de France finishers from 1999 to 2005 were taking PEDs, and 36 of 45 top three finishers from 1996 to 2010 were also doping. While "everybody's doing it" might not fly in a kindergarten classroom, sports can and should have an internal standard of behavior. The current bans simply don't work, and keep rule-following athletes from being competitve with their peers.

Sports are constantly evolving. Walter Payton wasn't training with world-class coaches in state-of-the-art facilities when he dominated. Babe Ruth wasn't drinking Gatorade or using creatine when he amazed his fans. We don't ban the advantages that modern day athletes have over their predecessors, and that attitude of progress should apply across the board. Getting a better night's sleep can enhance performance. Eating a healthy breakfast, taking vitamins and supplements, training harder or simple genetic advantages-there are countless factors that contribute to sports being "unfair." But that's the whole point of competition.

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.
Mac McCann is a columnist for The Horn at the University of Texas-Austin.
NO

Americans love high performance and we love technology. Why, then, do we get our knickers in a twist when professional athletes-think Lance Armstrong or A-Rod-turn out to have achieved their great feats with a boost from performance-enhancing drugs and other banned technologies?

Not everyone turns up their nose when a high-profile athlete dopes. Some offer excuses: the pressure to perform is overwhelming, and the rewards are too tempting to resist. We allow special diets, scientifically optimized training, and novel equipment, so why ban drugs, or, in Lance's case, bags of whole blood? Aren't they all just technologies intended to produce outstanding performances? In some sports in some eras, nearly every competitor was doping: how else could an athlete have a shot at winning?

That last argument-everyone does it, so I'm just leveling the pharmaceutical playing field-provides half of the answer. When I first asked elite athletes more than 30 years ago why drugs were being used, the answer was unequivocal: Whatever reservations you might have, no one wants to give up a competitive advantage, especially to someone who might not be as talented or dedicated as you but can get enough of an edge from drugs to beat you.
Thomas Murray is the president emeritus of the Hastings Center, a non-profit bioethics research institute.
That story of a drug race spiraling ever upwards, much as the arms race drove nations to build more and deadlier weapons, is one of the best reasons to ban doping in sports. It doesn't end with the pros either. Amateur athletes, including high school and perhaps younger participants, look to their heroes for examples of how to succeed in sport. If doping was allowed, we could expect non-elite athletes to pursue the latest advances in performance enhancing drugs just as they buy the latest running shoes, bikes, or tennis rackets. In no universe is this a healthy development. Pros and those who emulate them will be driven to use drugs in doses and combinations no scientist has ever studied.

Doping in pro sports is a useful prod that forces us to ask what sport is all about anyway? Why do we play? When we see an exceptional performance, when we experience one of those moments of grace and excellence in ourselves, what makes it so special? If excellence in sport is the intersection of talent and dedication, as I believe, then drugs distort and distract. eOur shared understanding of the meaning and value of sport will determine whether doping should continue to be banned. That decision is up to all of us.

What do you think readers? Join the debate by leaving a comment below with your opinion.

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Debate: Should Performance-enhancing drugs be legalized?

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Should performance-enhancing drugs be legalized? Our experts debate. 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.

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During this video It state “Would you take Performance Enhancement Drugs that help you become an Olympic champion,what if that drug had some serious side affects?.”This video shows the drugs that these athletes take and what happens to the person when the chemicals are in their body.It shows the benefits and the negative affects that will come with taking these drugs.

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What Do Performance-Enhancing Drugs Do To Your Body?

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In this creditable source Effects of Performance-Enhancement Drugs, It states “The negative effects these drugs can have on one’s body make USADA’s mission paramount as to why no athlete should ever have to consider PED use to succeed in sports”. This quotes explains my claim perfectly,The PED isn’t safe at all,just those and any other drug can take a huge toll on your body and you wont know what can happen to you.

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Effects of Performance-Enhancing Drugs | USADA

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The side effects of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) can be dangerous and negative for athletes causing health issues including strokes and heart attacks.

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In the article Doping In Sports-Cheating Or Leveling The Sports Field It states “The lure of success, enormous financial and social rewards, create an incentive to win at all costs, which includes cheating.” “The benefits of cheating far outweigh the penalties.”This quote isn’t valid,cheating and taking the easy way out to win against competition Is never an option.These drugs that enhance their performance have life threatening effects that most athletes don’t think about.My claim Is valid because you wont have the fear of risking putting these harmful drug chemicals in your body,shorting your life,and getting caught using them since their not allowed,Why not just work hard and naturally come out as the winner.

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Football, soccer, basketball, tennis, swimming, cycling, track-and-field, body-building, baseball, weightlifting, boxing, wrestling, ice hockey, rugby, and other sports, all have a track record of performance-enhancing drug usage. Each year, over 3000 athletes worldwide test positive for banned substances.

As quoted in a published article, "For two years, I took EPO, growth hormone, anabolic steroids, testosterone, amphetamine. Just about everything. That was part of the job." - Erwan Mentheour, Cyclist.

On December 5, 2017, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Russia from taking the national team to the February 2018 winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This decision was a punishment for running a state-sponsored doping program. If Russian athletes independently prove they are clean, they can then compete in these games under the Olympic flag.

The big question is, whether the usage of performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in sports in some form?

Each year, top athletes earn millions of dollars in compensation and millions more in sponsorships and endorsements. The lure of success, enormous financial and social rewards, create an incentive to win at all costs, which includes cheating. The benefits of cheating far outweigh the penalties. A six-month to a one year ban from competition is a small price to pay when multi-year multi-million dollar contracts are at stake.

The choice space of hard to detect drugs for "performance enhancement" is an array of specialized highly efficacious chemical products readily available for various targeted outcomes. Anabolic steroids are natural and synthetic derivatives of the male sex hormone testosterone. Steroids help build muscle mass, enable athletes to train harder and facilitate quick recovery from strenuous workouts. Small doses of Androgen, an anabolic steroid, can increase muscular strength by about 5-20%. Other drugs, Erythropoietin (EPO) and growth hormones, help provide a performance edge by bio-engineering the body's ability to use, produce and carry oxygen to the working muscles - a technique popularly known as blood doping. Most of these drugs mimic natural chemicals in the body, and hence, are hard to detect.

Enormous rewards for the winner combined with the low probability of getting caught makes doping too alluring.

On the darker side, doping athletes run the risk of minor to life-threatening side-effects. According to late Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an American internist with expertise in the field of drug use in sports states in a published article, "athletes live in a world of invincibility and denial. They'll hear me say it's dangerous, but their risk-reward ratio is so distorted that they disregard the risk even if it means shortening their life."

On the margin, performance enhancing drugs do give an asymmetric advantage to the players using them, as do alternate means of advanced coaching and training regimens. Wiring of athletes to monitoring equipment to orchestrate optimum heart, muscle, brain, nerves performance; access to a team of sports specialists; training at altitude to increase oxygen intake, are all asymmetric advantages.

Bryant McKinnie, a former American football offensive tackle, at 6 feet 8 inches tall states, "athletes cheat because of players like me." He sincerely further mentions, "my size and strength is tough to beat. Some of these athletes have families to feed, and they, in turn, take drugs to compete with big guys like me." As he reflected on his football career, he did feel somewhat challenged as he was not just competing with well-trained athletes but probably with some well-trained athletes supercharged with enhancement drugs. He went on to say, "the drugs, the regimen and how to avoid the detection are offered and readily available through the support ecosystem." He puzzles over by stating, "regulating the drugs might make the playing stage fair."

Elite sport is not just about watching players compete. It is more to do with appreciating the extraordinary performance. Some of the best players are not only talented performers but also virtuosos and maestros. The elite sport has become the domain of the gifted, and in some form, may be biased against the disadvantaged. Biological manipulation through enhancement drugs is a means for some to level the playing field.

Ian James Thorpe, a retired Australian swimmer, has large feet which gave him a tremendous advantage. Michael Phelps, a retired American competitive swimmer and the most decorated Olympian of all time, is built for swimming, as are most other world-class swimmers. They are usually tall, muscular, long-armed, and frequently have longer-than-average torsos with relatively shorter legs. However, it requires a lot more than just the right body type to get to the top. Physical advantages give a head-start, but they aren't sufficient on their own. Michael Phelps' talent and techniques, excellent stroke mechanics, combined with a ferocious focus, drive, competitive nature and practice is what delivered the elite performance. Tiger Woods, the hall-of-fame golfing legend, developed the perfect swing to hit a ball 250 yards in a straight line, probably after hitting many thousands of balls.

David Epstein, the author of the book, The Sports Gene, states in a published interview, "genetics influences just about everything, but doesn't determine almost anything." "Genes are predisposition and not destiny. The biological setup allows one to benefit more than the next guy." He argues that an intersection of genes, training, economic incentives, and cultural institutions is what creates the athlete.

It is a combination of multiple conducive genetic traits and environmental factors that make the great athlete.

Professor Julian Savulescu, in a University of Oxford publication, makes an argument that rather than banning performance enhancing drugs we should regulate their use. He states, "by allowing everyone to take drugs, we level the playing field." He further states, "we remove the effects of genetic inequality. Far from being unfair, allowing performance enhancement promotes equality." The incentive to develop undetectable drugs, with little concern for safety might be causing long-term harm to the athletes.

In the above University of Oxford publication, other experts do not agree. Sports medicine specialists, Doctors Leon Creaney and Anna Vondy state, "the arguments against doping in sport are moral, not medical." They further write, "athletes who want to live a healthy existence would be pushed out altogether. Soon, the only competition that would matter would be the one to develop the most powerful drugs, and athletic opponents would enter into an exchange of ever-escalating doses to stay ahead of each other." They feel that legitimizing the performance-enhancing drugs in elite and professional sports would expand the usage exponentially and filter deeper into our society.

To seek an asymmetric edge, athletes are susceptible to cheating by taking performance-enhancing drugs. The stakes are high - millions of dollars in earnings for years versus the low probability of getting caught. Either the penalty associated with taking drugs should be made much higher, i.e., lifetime ban, so that very few people take the gamble, or a regulated use of performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed.

But then, would a bio-engineered sports performance inspire the same level of awe and admiration?

... Read More

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Doping In Sports - Cheating Or Leveling Of The Playing Field?

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Football, soccer, basketball, tennis, swimming, cycling, track-and-field, body-building, baseball, weightlifting, boxing, wrestling, ice hockey, rugby, and other sports, all have a track record of performance-enhancing drug usage. Each year, over 3000 athletes worldwide test positive for banned substances. As quoted in a published article, "For two years, I took EPO, growth hormone, anabolic steroids, testosterone, amphetamine.

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In the article why steroids have no place in sports It states,“Ask anyone with a decent knowledge of sports and current events, and they will tell you: doping in sport is a problem”,implying that doping in sports have no place,harmful to the athletes health,and how its an big problem because there are thousands of results from people doping weather If Its high school or professionally

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Doping which is drug use in sports have been happening since sports first started.This would even happen in the Olympic Games where athletes from all around the world would compete to do what they loved to do.