Performance Enhacing Drugs in Sports Persuassive Essay

Performance enhancing drugs should not be allowed in sports.

Performance enhancing drugs should not be allowed in sports. As plain and simple as my opening sentence reads and I totally believe in the theory. The theory that not only are the drugs un-healthy in prolonged use, but the fact that it allows for an unfair advantage over other players who are competing legitimately, and is 110% cheating. This also gives the youth a positive idea if they see their role models take enhancers, leading them on to think that these drugs are okay to partake in. Legitimate competition should be taken very seriously, with the attitude of fair play and gracious defeat.
Just as if a card player could see their opponent’s cards, so is the unfair advantage that is caused by using these performance enhancing drugs. There is a great deal of preparation that goes into the competitors before they compete in a match of their choice. Some people train all their lives just to be able to compete in an event, let alone win. To throw an opponent in the ring that put in less effort for the results shown is an unfair advantage on its own. But facing someone who has trained all their lives, and you who have just done adequate training on top of the drug usage is not only unfair, but it is cheating. If you can't compete legitimately then there is not much point in competing at all. If you cannot play a sport in which you are paid more than enough money to play without using “enhancers” you should not be allowed to play.
Besides the issue of unfair advantage there are also health and social issues. Not only do sportsmen hurt themselves undergoing artificial treatment for both their body and mind, but they also hurt society. When players take part in drugs, they are not thinking of the long term effects of what they are injecting into their bodies. For example, when athletes take anabolic-steroids, they are putting themselves at risk for dehydration, digestive disorders, and addiction to the steroid itself!(Ray) As sports is a big part of our culture and the famous players are also role models for our youth this act sets an awful example. Athletes such as hometown hero Mark McGwire, baseball legend Barry Bonds, and even an Olympic contestant Marion Jones have lead us to believe it was their original skill, but in reality, it was help from the drugs.(pharmacytech) If we allow these drugs in sports then even the recreational weekenders would call for steroid use, thus leading the youth of our culture to exposure of bad medicine and physically wrong deeds.
Morally our culture is against the use of drugs both mind altering and physically negative. However with the current generation of youth who would just like to go to the gym for health reasons or what not, a large majority partake in steroid use. In the United States, about 3 million people use anabolic steroids — one in four of these steroid users started as a teenager, and one out of every 10 is a teenager.(Mayo) These are not even professional athletes and they already have such a high view of steroids and think it is the “easy way out”. As a society we have done our best to prevent the use of drugs, but when role models and favorite players are caught participating in steroid use, they think it is okay because they want nothing more than to be like their role model. But what the youth is not thinking about are the side effects which are just yawned upon, and left for later down the roads of their lives.
Conclusively I would stress that when a famous athlete injects himself with these substances, he/she also injects the minds of today's youth. I for one firmly believe in role model influence and believe that the role models of today should lead by example, not by how high of rank they can receive.

Work cited Ray, Linda. livestrong.com. Ed. Julie Mendenhall. N.p., 27 Sept. 2009. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. www.pharmacytechs.com. N.p., 2 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2012. MayoClinic. cnn.com. N.p., 5 Jan. 2007. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.