In the world of sports, there is a constant struggle for athletes to not only be the best they can be, but to be the best in the game. Especially nowadays with all the money in sports contracts, the difference between being good and being average could be millions of dollars. Having all this continuous pressure, there is no surprise that some athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs to help them achieve their goals to be the best. This practice, also known as "doping", is not new, and there is even evidence that Roman gladiators used stimulants and hallucinogens to prevent fatigue, injury, and to improve the intensity of the fight all the way back in 100 AD (ProCon.org). Today's athletes have moved to more prominent performance enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and other supplements. Anabolic steroids help athletes recover from work outs a lot faster than they normally would by stimulating proteins, which then allows the athlete to work out way more often and build muscle at astonishing speeds. These are put into their bodies by being injected by a needle, usually in the shoulder, thigh, or buttocks. One of the most common types of anabolic steroids is Tetrahydrogestrinone, which is the type star Major League Baseball player Barry Bonds used. Human growth hormones are taken to increase the size of current muscle cells, create new muscle cells, and burn more fat than usual. This is also injected, usually in the same place, but instead of getting it illegally, one can have it proscribed by their doctor, but that is still not allowed in sports. Human growth hormone was part of racing cyclist Lance Armstrong's performance enhancing drug routine. In 1976, the International Olympic Committee officially banned the use of steroids, while performance enhancing drugs did not make it on to Major League Baseballs banned substance list until 1991 and even then, they did not start testing players until 2003 (CNN). This twelve year wait by Major League Baseball allowed for what is known as the "steroid era", an era in which many people believe saved the sport of baseball in America. This was a time of records being broken and baseballs flying out the park, caused by a league filled with juiced players. During this era, attendance for games went up 44 percent, ticket prices went up 78 percent, and major league baseball's revenue went up 115 percent (Koslosky) which has allowed for the sport to prosper to this day. While all of that was fun to watch, it was still illegal to use performance enhancing drugs, and if an athlete's name is linked to them chances are they will never touch Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame, no matter how good their career was. They will also be known to the public as cheaters with uncreditable careers, look at Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong, these two athletes reached for a way to gain an unfair advantage and it ended up destroying them in the long run. Major sports outlets, such as the Olympics and Major League Baseball should continue to ban performance enhancing drugs for reasons such as athlete's health, the want for such drugs, availability, and to prevent an all-out chemical arms race.

It is pretty safe to say that a person's health is one of the most important things, if not the most important thing a person can have. Performance enhancing drugs affect ones health, mentally, physically, short term, and long term. In Fred Hartgens' and Harm Kuipers' article "Effects of Androgenic-Anabolic Steroids in Athletes", which got published in Sports Medicine, they share extensively studied facts on steroids. Short term physical effects of these androgenic-anabolic steroids could appear quicker than you thought, "the administration of supratherapeutic doses of AAS will reduce the quantity and quality of semen production in male athletes and may lead to infertility within months". Within months is quick, it is crazy to think that some athletes take these for years, as if it is not aggressively changing their bodies for the worst. Hartgens and Kuipers also talk about longer term physical effects, they state that AASs could wreak havoc on one's cardiovascular system, blood pressure, and liver. Now say that steroids only affected ones reproductive system, then it would be reasonable for some athletes, such as the ones who do not care to reproduce, to take them; but the fact that they can destroy one cardiovascular system and liver, makes it almost insane to think someone is alright with accepting these risk. Athletes who take these risk do it for the chance to make large amounts of money, but there is not much of a point in trying to make all that money if their body is just going to fail before they can enjoy it all. The mental effects of anabolic steroids may not be as serious, but they are still to be considered. Hartgens and Kuipers state that people on these steroids can be "subject to an increase of aggression and or hostility" and mood changes can include depression, paranoia, and psychotic features, but these mood changes are dependent on doses. All these side effects make it clear that these drugs do not need and should not be present in sports, but there are still some who are believe otherwise. James Kirkup wrote an article in which he is pro performance enhancing drugs. In this article James points out that sports like boxing, American football, rugby, and even pro level marathon running can be significantly damaging to one's health, yet people still love to participate in those, and fans still love to watch those sports, so what is so wrong with allowing performance enhancing drugs? Well there is a very good reason as to why Kirkup's argument is not very sound. There are still plenty of athletes who want to perform without PEDs, and if these drugs become unbanned, then a lot of athletes are going to start using them. When those athletes start using them, they are going to begin to outperform the majority of the clean athletes, and once those clean athletes figure out they are going to be without jobs if they keep this up, they will be forced into doing something in which they do not want to do, inject themselves with steroids. Now all these athletes that wanted a clean sport are forced to take on all the health risks of performance enhancing drugs just so they can stay relevant with the competition. But the worst part is, once ever last player is doped up on these drugs, the competition is leveled again, so now these athletes are taking on all these terrible health risk while gaining zero advantages on the other competitors. It would be almost inhumane to force this upon athletes, and for that reason performance enhancing drugs should continue to be banned.

Allowing performance enhancing would not only become a health issue, but it will also lead to a chemical civil war. Jacob Beck explains in his article that "the legalization of PEDs in baseball would likewise generate a vicious arms race, the game would become a competition to find the best drugs". This could not be truer, for a couple of reasons. Like stated before, if everyone is on performance enhancing drugs, then it is like no one is, and players will soon figure this out. They will then decide to look for stronger, more productive drugs so they can regain a competitive advantage on the other athletes. This will continue to happen and soon sports that allowed performance enhancing drugs will turn into who has the best pharmacist instead of who has the most talent. Once this problem is at its peak, it would be obvious that everyone would have been better off if these drugs were never allowed. Of course there is always someone with a counter argument, and that would be Julian Savulescu, Foddy Bennett, and M Clayton. In their article "Why we should allow performance enhancing drugs in sport", they insist that if athletes take correct dosages and keep specific logs of their intake while checking with doctors on a regular basis then it will be safe. But those kind of expectations are too much to ask for. Athletes trying to become the best they can are not just going to take the correct dosage, if performance enhancing drugs are there and legal. Athletes nowadays take on the health risk, suspension risk, and the risk of their reputation just for the chance that they can become better, what makes one think that these athletes will start to take healthy doses and drugs now that they are legal? Which is why performance enhancing drugs should continue to stay banned, one cannot expect an athlete with millions on the line to only take a specific does, and it will end up leading to a drug civil war.

Athletes and fans both want performance enhancing drugs to continue to be banned. Athletes do not want to risk their health by having performance enhancing drugs forced upon them, athletes in general do not even want to take them, the only reason some do is because they decide that the reward is worth taking a risk for. "While only 28.2% of the players on MLB Opening Day rosters were born outside the 50 United States, foreign-born players account for 63.2% of the PED suspensions since 2004" (Beech). It is safe to say that these foreign born players are from poorer countries, such as the Dominican Republic, and are trying to make it big for themselves and for their families. These players decided that a 50 game suspension without pay was worth risking if it meant they might make it big. Even these players that illegally use performance enhancing drugs do not want them to become legal, because then they will not be able to have the advantage in which they cheat for. Malcolm Gladwell makes an interesting point in a podcast, asking "if we allow laser surgery to improve eyesight or Tommy John surgery to replace torn UCL ligaments, all of which increase performances, then why can we not allow performance enhancing drugs?" Now, although all three of those do increase performance, they do not belong in the same category. Tommy John surgeries goal is to replace a ligament in which you already had and need if you are going to throw a baseball again; this procedure does not put a person's health in danger, not does it cause an unfair advantage to those who receive it. Laser eye surgery is a little different, having this surgery can definitely increase the athlete's performance, obviously because eye sight is very important to most athletic competitions. But once again there is a key difference between laser surgery and performance enhancing drugs, and that is that performance enhancing drugs deteriorate ones health. Which is why athletes do not want performance enhancing drugs to become legal. Not only do athletes want performance enhancing drugs out of their sport, but so do fans. In a poll done by The New York Times, 82 percent of fans said that they would mind if a player used steroids, while 16 percent said they did not care and 2 percent did not have an opinion (Schreiber). Major League Baseball is a business, and if 82 percent of your fans do not want something, then it is smart to follow what they want or you could end up with a dying sport. 

Allowing performance enhancing drugs in sports would only make the playing field less fair because of the availability, and steroids could even trickle down to lower level competition. The poorer countries would not be able to match the drug capability of all the top tier countries, so they would be forced to use the more dangerous steroids in hope of just being able to compete on the field. In the long run, this would make the Olympics less competitive and less entertaining. Now, there is another significant risk of allowing performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball. Players in all the lower level competitions will start becoming convinced that PEDs are the right and only move, which means athletes in college, and even high schoolers are going to be experimenting. Performance enhancing drugs making their way into high school sports would be a travesty in its own. Which are a couple more reasons as to why PEDs should continue to remain banned.

Performance enhancing drugs and sports go back a long, long ways and sports will probably never actually be a hundred percent clean, but they should also never welcome steroids with open arms either. It is important to keep sports honest, so fans can enjoy them for how they were intended, pure talent and knowledge against others to see who the best is. There are far too many health problems that come with allowing performance enhancing drugs for them to even be considered appropriate for athletes, including cardiovascular, liver, reproductive, and mental problems. Keeping steroids banned would prevent an arms race in which scientist tried to find the most productive steroid possible, but would end up being redundant because everyone would end up being on the same competitive level again, with all the health risk and no competitive advantage. Both fans and athletes are against allowing steroid into their sport, even though some people think that there are already other types of performance enhancing options. Allowing steroids would also make sports less fair because of the availability for everyone and it would eventually affect the youth in a negative way. Scientist should continue to study the side effects that performance enhancing drugs have on people's bodies, both long term and short term. In the future, sports league should even look to make their consequences stricter so that athletes would be less likely to cheat and make the game less clean. 

