Why PEDs Should be Legal in Sports
Why PEDs Should be Legal in Sports
In life we all strive to be the greatest we can, we do anything to reach our maximum potential. As sports fans we pay to see the best athletes perform at their maximum potential. Performance enhancing drugs do just this; help athletes reach their pinnacle. Currently most are not legal in professional sports, but this should change. With performance enhancing drugs legal it would make professional sports far more entertaining, reduce underground and unsafe drug use, give everybody the option to be on a level playing field, along with many other positive benefits. As sports fans, you pay to see the best players compete at their best possible level. With performance enhancing drugs legal it allows all players the ability to compete at their highest level. In 1998, the peak of the steroid era, baseball saw players putting up the best numbers of their lives. Players were throwing harder than ever and hitting more home runs than ever as well. Sammy Sosa of the Cubs hit 66 home runs and Mark McGuire of the Cardinals hit 70 home runs both breaking the single season home run record of 61, which had stood for 37 years before that. This drew in many fans Time Entertainment states, “America was captivated by the two huge men and the great home-run race…McGwire, with forearms the size of a grown man 's neck, 17 inches around, was a gate attraction unto himself, a modern wonder of the world” (Torre, and Verducci, 2009, pg.1). Attendance and interest was at it’s highest it had been in a long while. According to Time Entertainment, “Attendance jumped 12%, with almost seven and a half million more people paying their way into ballparks. The per-game major league average improved by 4% to 29,054, the best it had been since before the strike hit. The ratings for games televised by Fox improved by 11%t” (Torre, and Verducci pg.1). The fans loved these huge men out there playing ball. Not to mention how much money it was bringing in, with all
In life we all strive to be the greatest we can, we do anything to reach our maximum potential. As sports fans we pay to see the best athletes perform at their maximum potential. Performance enhancing drugs do just this; help athletes reach their pinnacle. Currently most are not legal in professional sports, but this should change. With performance enhancing drugs legal it would make professional sports far more entertaining, reduce underground and unsafe drug use, give everybody the option to be on a level playing field, along with many other positive benefits. As sports fans, you pay to see the best players compete at their best possible level. With performance enhancing drugs legal it allows all players the ability to compete at their highest level. In 1998, the peak of the steroid era, baseball saw players putting up the best numbers of their lives. Players were throwing harder than ever and hitting more home runs than ever as well. Sammy Sosa of the Cubs hit 66 home runs and Mark McGuire of the Cardinals hit 70 home runs both breaking the single season home run record of 61, which had stood for 37 years before that. This drew in many fans Time Entertainment states, “America was captivated by the two huge men and the great home-run race…McGwire, with forearms the size of a grown man 's neck, 17 inches around, was a gate attraction unto himself, a modern wonder of the world” (Torre, and Verducci, 2009, pg.1). Attendance and interest was at it’s highest it had been in a long while. According to Time Entertainment, “Attendance jumped 12%, with almost seven and a half million more people paying their way into ballparks. The per-game major league average improved by 4% to 29,054, the best it had been since before the strike hit. The ratings for games televised by Fox improved by 11%t” (Torre, and Verducci pg.1). The fans loved these huge men out there playing ball. Not to mention how much money it was bringing in, with all
References: Frost, Norman. "Steroid Hysteria: Unpacking the Claims." American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. Nov 2005 Jost, K. (2004, July 23). Sports and drugs. CQ Researcher, 14, 613-636. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/ Kayser, Bengt, Alexandre Mauron, and Andy Miah. "Viewpoint: Legalisation of Performance-Enhancing Drugs." Lancet. Dec 2005. Simon, Robert. Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Wesview Press, 2004. Torre, Joe, and Tom Verducci. "The Man Who Warned Baseball About Steroids." Time Entertainment. 23 Feb 2009: 1-3. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. .