Wouldn't you want the best product if you were paying for it?  The general market of goods and services is a never ending evolution to provide the best product for the customer, so why are professional sports leagues, a major part of American life, not allowed to take part in this evolution.  As the market for professional sports increased, rules, equipment and training techniques advanced in order to provide the greatest entertainment for the paying fans watching the events.  But, a critical supplement applicable to every athlete, performance enhancement drugs, was deemed illegal.  Performance enhancement drugs or PED's have been in use since the beginning of professional sports and have been in major media headlines for decades.  An on going battle between professional sports leagues and the athletes surrounding the use of PED's has always ended with more and more substances being banned and more athletes fined, suspended and even a banned for life.  Why are these substances illegal?  Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports leagues because it creates a safer environment for the athletes while creating a fair playing field and keeps the youth's role models in a good light.

If PED's were legalized, mass amounts of change would hit sports.  One of those changes would be the type of environment that professional athletes who use illegal substances are in.  The current setting that an athlete goes through in order to obtain PED's is secret, black market like and unregulated.  As Doctor Savulesu points out in his journal Why We Should Allow Performance Enhancement Drugs in Sports, "What matters is health and fitness to compete. Rather than testing for drugs, we should focus more on health and fitness to compete" the athlete's health is not in the focus of the league's agenda (Savulesu).  Athletes are walking through backdoors in darkness and hiding medical conditions in order to get that extra boost ahead of the competition.  Certain steroids are used to help injuries and preexisting medical conditions.  This is also explained by Doctor Savulesu, "For many athletes, sport is not safe enough without drugs. If they suffer from asthma, high blood pressure, or cardiac arrhythmia, sport places their bodies under unique stresses, which raise the likelihood of a chronic or catastrophic harm." (Savulesu).  With the legalization of PED's in sports, athletes would no longer have to risk unwarranted injury and can perform to the best of their ability without being persecuted for taking a substance that is needed.  Another positive safety feature with the permitted use of performance enhancement drugs would be incentivizing better doctors to focus on the field.  If PED's are decriminalized in professional sports, qualified doctors would rush to the greatly increased market of steroids. Research to make more effective drugs for the athletes and safer drugs would significantly increase.  The current state at which PED's are in is not healthy for athletes and with the legalization of them athletes would have better qualified doctors administering the drugs and the focus would switch from testing for illegal substances to the health of the athlete, which is the most important subject in sports.

Another positive of PED's becoming legal would be the complete level playing field.  Athletes will always try and do what it takes to be better than the others to earn a larger pay check.  Performance enhancement drugs rose in sports when the pay for the performance outweighed the cost of getting caught.  Due to the large amounts of money athletes are receiving, cheating will never be erased from professional sports, especially with the current drug testing policies.  Andy Dolich talks about multiple drug testing protocols in major sports leagues in his article Drug Testing Policies: NFl, NBA, NHL, Olympics and explores the foolishness of punishments and testing that goes on.  Professional sport leagues have very minimal punishments for an offense and the tests are very infrequent with easy ways to get around the system (Dolich). Drug testing for illegal supplements is painfully inadequate, letting athletes slip through the cracks.  If performance enhancement drugs were legal to use for professional athletes, no one would slip through the cracks and gain that added advantage over others.  If no one is obtaining that added advantage, then all athletes are placed on a level playing field.  In the current state athletes who abide by the rules are the ones who are being penalized.  It is not right for an athlete to fall behind his/her fellow competitors due to them following the rules.  As stated before, athletes will find a way around rules in order to make the large amount of money that is available but, if there were no rules than everyone would have an equal chance to earn that paycheck so highly sought.   

With super star athletes being criminalized for using performance enhancing drugs, our nation's youth are being mistreated.  One of the largest stages to express an image in America is on the fields of professional sports.  If countless role models are being tarnished it will negatively effect the youth of America.  Colin Latiner touches this topic in his journal Steroids and Drug Enhancements in Sports: The Real Problem and The Real Solution when he states "Given the significant role that sports play in America, they "sometimes serve as a model of the larger society."' Ensuring that model is a positive one becomes an increasingly important goal as sports develop, change and grow within our culture." (Latiner).  As a society we should not target and criminalize a majority of the nation's role models for substances that help them with their job.  Stephen Brotherton explores the values of youth that are effected in "Performance Enhancement Drugs in Sports".  By seeing a role model figure going around the rules, children learn tendencies to not listen to rules and to look for alternative routes for completing a job (Brotherton).  Performance enhancement drug violations should not be the heinous crime it is portrayed to be.  The media coverage plays the biggest role in destroying the player's reputation and thus causing harm to all the fans of that athlete, especially the children.  Having a role model, hero, someone to look up to plays a huge role in a young person's life, particularly in a single parent household.  By eliminating the criminal aspect of performance enhancement drugs, the youth of America will benefit.

While on the surface performance enhancement drugs seem perfect, but they aren't something you would want to take.  The health risks for these supplements are astronomical.  Many of these PED's cause long term damage to vital organs.  Peter Angell along with several other qualified authors explain the serious implications of performance enhancement drug abuse in their journal, "Performance Enhancing Drug Abuse and Cardiovascular Risk in Athletes: Implications for the Clinician".  Athletes who abused anabolic agent performance enhancement drugs learned the negative effects of the drugs years after stopping use.  Along with vital organ damage, the athletes showed an increase in cardiovascular disease risk factors including; increased blood pressure, left ventricular mass, shrunken cardiac function and contracted arterial function (Angell).  Several other studies show the same damaging results to people who use these drugs and are presented in a video created by Catalyst "Doping to Win".  The Australian based company showed how the drugs work and exactly how the athletes are being affected.  The initial result of the drug is the desired one that gives athletes the extra boost to reach his/her goals, but after years of use athletes showed damaged organs, specifically the liver, lungs and heart (Catalyst).  This is what we have been told by the doctors that have done tests, that performance enhancement drugs despite making you look healthy are actually destroying your insides.  Peter Angell brings up an interesting point about the studies "While recent data have started to paint a clearer picture of some of the negative cardiovascular consequences of steroid use, longitudinal data are still lacking making the long-term chronic effects of steroid use difficult to ascertain" (Angell).  He also goes onto explain other issues such as "Inherently, the study of steroid use is complicated by many factors.  Specifically, most studies recruit diverse cohorts of self-selected steroid users.  In these groups there is likely great heterogeneity in total AS dose, poly-drug regimens employed as well the difficulty in verifying the 'true' dosages used" (Angell).  The studies that have been claiming the negative results are not enough.  As pointed out there are several flaws and many more needed to be done with random sampling in order to make a positive claim.  There is no doubt that there is a negative side to performance enhancement drugs, but more is needed to be done in order to fully state a definite claim.  But research to find out the negative effects should not be given truck loads of money, performance enhancement drug betterment should.  Instead of investigating how bad something is and leaving it, researchers should be looking for ways to stop the negative effects and make performance enhancement drugs healthier.  Athletes will still dope despite the known health risks because the reward is too great not to.  By putting in the correct research, healthier drugs will be created and one of the few problems with performance enhancement drugs in professional sports will be diminished.

It is argued that PED's takes the sport out of sports.  The claim is that the morality of competition is lessened significantly when these supplements are taken by athletes.  This is a false statement when viewing professional sports in a bigger picture than just people competing.  Professional sport leagues are businesses that provide a service through the entertainment of athletes playing a particular sport.  The athletes may love the game they play very much but when they signed their contract to start their professional career, the goal in mind was to make the most money they can. As pointed out by Andrew Alderson in "Doping: Experts Predict Where the Future Lies", taking performance enhancement drugs does not effect the spirit of the sport significantly because the professional aspect of modern day sports already does that.  Athletes also should not feel morally wrong taking performance enhancement drugs.  Supplements are not a magical pill that you take before you go to bed and the next morning you wake up and the results show.  Performance enhancement drugs are called supplements for a reason, it only gives an extra boost in obtaining the athletes goal (Alderson).  The subject taking these drugs still works just as hard as they would without taking them, just that they are getting more out of the work than they would have without taking them.  This extra boost unlocked by performance enhancement drugs should be allowed because the athlete is still putting in the work to reach his/her goals.

How would PED's become legal?  I believe that PED's should only be used in professional sports.  College and high school athletics should still test and ban these substances.  I also believe that the Olympics should stay PED free due to the nature of the Olympics.  The Olympics is a competition of amateur athletes and did not have professional athletes sweeping away the medals until recently.  By keeping the Olympics performance enhancement drug free, all the professional athletes who dope will not be able to compete allowing amateurs to be the majority again. Unlike professional sports the Olympics is not a business, in fact only several cities have made money off of hosting the Olympics (Appelbaum).  The Olympics is an event that is about the spirit of sport and should remain to very pure athletic abilities.  Sport leagues that do legalize PED's should keep a close check on their athletes and where they are obtaining these drugs.  Professional sport leagues can do this by having their own dispensers of performance enhancement drugs and should have team doctors for the sole purpose of monitoring the usage and effects of the drugs.  This will put the athlete's health in focus and can determine what types of performance enchantment drugs the athletes are using.

Performance enhancement drugs are legal for recreational use.  People outside of professional sports use supplements to help reach their goals.  So why can't athletes?  Many people will be greatly effected by the legalization of performance enhancement drugs in professional sports.  Major League Baseball is currently in a ticket sale slump, with thousands of empty seats at games.  Performance enhancement drugs will make games more spectacular and will increase ticket sales in a lot of the professional sport leagues.  The athletes will also benefit because of healthier conditions and a fair playing field with no advantages.  The nation's youth will have clean role models and heroes instead of having their hearts crushed seeing a person they look up to dragged through the dirt for something so minuscule.  Finally, the fans will get the entertainment they want and deserve.  Performance enhancement drugs may be unhealthy but, with a more focused eye on the athletes and an emphasis on the research due to the increased market, supplements can be taken by athletes in a safe environment that will not be detrimental to their bodies later in life.  From the aspect of seeing professional sports for what they truly are, money making businesses, the morality and spirit of sport will not be effected by athletes taking performance enchantment drugs.  Humans evolve, its what we do so we should use the available technology to our benefit.  Performance enhancement drugs is the future of sports. 

