Why Do We Need Drug Testing In Sport?

Even though the process and policies has flaws, drug testing should be included in competitive sports to help promote fair play, and since these drugs provide an unfair advantage, all achievements while testing positive for performance enhancing drugs should be stricken from the records. Anabolic and performance enhancing drugs can ruin any athlete’s career. A large amount of athletes get stuck taking these types of drugs, having suspensions become too regular during an athletic season.
Maria Sharapova, the tennis player ranked 9th in the world, is an athlete that takes a lot of pride and dignity in her work. Sharapova is a 28 year old, 5 time Grand-Slam Champion, who is currently the world’s highest paid female athlete. On March 12th, 2016,
Recreational drugs affect the players, not the game, while performance enhancing drugs affect the players and the game. This means that when an athlete is taking drugs that do not have any enhancing effects to it, it may affect the rest of the players, but mostly the person taking the drugs. (Travis 1) Colleges and universities’ drug testing only extends to athletes, while many of them have athletic scholarships. There is no reason for drug testing to also be given to academic scholarship students as well. This proves that major universities have an extremely biased opinion on the drug testing issue. (Travis 2)
Drug testing has been going on for a very long time, starting around a century ago. During the 19th century, they did not have the kind of performance enhancing drugs that we have now, they used supplements varied from sugar to cocaine. These were all substitutes for the performance boosting drugs that we have today. The Greeks were a major group of people that used performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics. There has to be a way to stop athletes from taking the large amount of drugs, as well as improve the drug testing policies. (Bouchard