Steroids have plagued professional sports for decades and it only seems to be getting worse, but why are we are still fighting its use after years of top tier doping scandals? Is it even possible to win nowadays without performance enhancing drugs? “The Tour de France? No. Impossible to win without doping.” As seven time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong stated to the French newspaper Le Monde after his confession to steroid use. (Wang) The push to legalize steroid use among professional sports is at an all-time high and many people are starting to agree. Whether we like it or not, more athletes are turning to performance enhancing drugs than ever before. All the while steroids have become more potent and dangerous. Sports have changed dramatically in the past few decades, but the integrity of them has never wavered. Professional athletes have become idols within our communities and for good reason. Athletes dedicate their entire lives to a sport and put in the work and effort to be the pinnacle of human performance. Steroids should not be legalized in professional sports due to the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular health repercussions that athletes would face as well as the degradation of integrity across major sports platforms.     

Steroids have been around for decades, but not many people understand how they came about or how they work. Steroid is a very broad term though, as there are many kinds of steroids, all consisting of the same nucleus structure, but varying in further structures of the atom. The most common form of a steroid, and the one we happen to be talking about, is an anabolic steroid. Anabolic steroids were discovered by scientist in the 1930’s when they learned that they could facilitate growth of skeletal muscle in laboratory animals. More properly known as anabolic-androgenic steroids, they consist of steroidal androgens that include testosterone and synthetic substances that mimic the effects of testosterone. (What) Anabolic refers to the synthesis of complex molecules in living organisms from simpler ones with the storage of energy, also known as constructive metabolism. Basically, the storage of energy. Androgenic just refers to male hormones, more specifically testosterone. Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone that is responsible for performing multiple important tasks, but most significant to athletes is its ability to increase muscle mass. Steroids increase protein within cells, especially in skeletal muscle. As well as increasing lean muscle mass, they also induce the growth of bones, vocal cords and body hair. Steroids are used in medicine to do things such as stimulate appetite, induce male puberty and treat conditions such as cancer and AIDS. The sports industry and many athletes have taken advantage of steroids over the years due to their performance enhancing abilities. This has caused a stir of controversy because of their potential to give athletes an unfair advantage in competitive sports and also because of their definitive adverse effects. Nearly all major sporting bodies ban doping, as it’s called. Steroids can cause harmful changes in cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, liver damage, and extremely dangerous changes in the structure of the left ventricle of the heart. Other hormonal imbalances are very common, but are not necessarily life threatening. There are different kinds of anabolic steroids, but all have very similar effects. Just as all steroids derive from the same nuclear compound, all anabolic steroids derive from a similar anabolic compound. Variations can be created through adding onto and slightly altering this compound. (Steroid)  

Many people are unaware of the recent push from committee board members, league officials and experts in the sports field to legalize steroids for professional use. It is easy to become ignorant to the fact that more and more athletes are turning to drugs. We want to believe that our favorite athletes are achieving their victories without the aid of steroids, but sadly for many that is not the case. Many believe that only certain sports have problems with doping, such as cycling and baseball. Tyler Hamilton, a retired pro cyclist and former member of Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Tour de France team stated “what happens in cycling, for sure goes on in other sports. My blood-doping doctor, Fuentes, he was involved in other sports and he coached some big-name athletes” (Silverman). We are currently in a steroid epidemic that seems to only get worse and that is why there has recently been such a push for steroids legalization. 

New drugs and drug enhancements seem to come about every day and it makes it nearly impossible to regulate their use. Bioethicist and professor at Oxford University, Julian Savulescu says "The science of drug testing has progressed, but it appears that the dopers are always a step ahead." (Savulescu) This constant being behind has led to an increase in the number of athletes using performance enhancing drugs year after year. The numbers have increased so drastically, that it has practically become a necessity to juice in order to win in some sports. Nearly all the top athletes in some sports, especially within the Olympics, have admitted or been found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs within the last few years. Many speculate that the reason behind our inability to catch athletes first time around is simply wrong timing. Victor Conte, a former steroid dealer that now aids the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) in rooting out athletes, states “you have to get in there and test them in a certain window, in autumn and winter. Once they get on the circuit in the summer, you're not going to test them positive.” (Draper). Conte is suggesting that athletes tend to change their cycle up closer to competition in order to avoid doping prosecution. The athletes are doing the real doping during the off season and they are just not testing during that time. Conte goes on to address the micro-dosing issue and how difficult it makes the process. Micro dosing consists of athletes using many very small doses of steroids in order to keep their testosterone levels within the accepted range. Although many experts criticize the WADA for not cracking down on micro dosing, they recently came out with this statement in attempts to quell the disparagement. “Micro-dosing can involve a range of different substances and not just synthetic testosterone. We have alerted all to these matters so that science can deal with the challenge.” (Draper). Whether this is just the WADA making excuses is up for debate, but we already know that most sport federations don’t respect the association as they should. Either way, it has become increasingly difficult to catch doping athletes and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of options. "There is no way to detect in the human body the newer generation of technology products. The athletes have advisors who know how to use these substances and avoid detection ... [and they] have supporters who get them the latest drugs before they are even on the market," said Tapio Videman (MD), the Heritage Senior Scholar of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta, to Express News. "Either we change the methods of testing for this substance or give up testing completely." (Wang) 

A key reason that steroids are illegal in sports is in order to keep a level playing field. Every year though athletes from winning teams and gold medalist are caught doping. So, obviously, there is not a level playing field. Natural athletes lose year after year to athletes that juice and then those juicing athletes just have their wins or medals revoked at a later date. Not only is there not a level playing field, but there are no winners. So, why not just legalize steroids? Then there would be no question of a level playing field, right? While this argument does make sense, it would only lead to bigger problems down the road. People are always going to try and cut corners to get ahead and athletes are no exception. Once steroids were legalized, athletes would be looking for the next way that they could cheat the system. It would lead to an array of steroid modifications and new drugs specifically designed for increased athletic performance. Who knows what new concoctions they could come up with. Rumors are already starting to sprout of a new way to modify the body’s natural abilities, including synthetic DNA. There is no end to athletes trying to get ahead of the game, so legalizing steroids now would just be succumbing to pressure. 

What about the business side of sports, the entertainment? This is another driving factor in the fight for performance enhancing drug legalization. Sports are by definition entertainment and therefore its main goal is simply to entertain. There is a reason that stadiums are made with thousands of seats. The lavish lifestyles that we see our athletes live out are only possible because of us, the viewer. From a business standpoint steroids seem very appealing. Due to steroids strength and healing benefits there is opportunity for a heightened level of intensity. More grand slams in baseball, bigger hits in football, and faster sprints around the track. Everything in sports could be bigger, faster and longer. When Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put up legendary numbers in 98’ and 99’ jerseys flew off the shelves, stadiums were sold out and it seemed like baseball had never been so exciting. (Smith) Trends have shown that baseball has been steadily growing in attendance and views since its birth and the closest years leading up to McGwire and Sosa’s record setting seasons were somewhat of a dry spell for baseball. Four years prior to McGwire and Sosa incredible seasons were some of the highest attendance reports in baseball history, even higher than Sosa’s amazing 37 home run season. (Lindholm) Baseball is no more exciting with steroids than it is without them. 

In a paper written in the Lancet, Professors Bengt Kayser, Alexandre Mauron, and Andy Miah write, "We believe that rather than drive doping underground, use of drugs should be permitted under medical supervision ... by allowing medically supervised doping, the drugs used could be assessed for a clearer view of what is dangerous and what is not." (Wang). Bringing the performance enhancing drug market out of the dark and into the light would definitely make it safer. A huge danger to taking steroids other than it’s health risks is not knowing everything about it when you take it. Since steroids are illegal, athletes are forced to do their transactions in less professional environments. Athletes can never know exactly what they are taking nor fully trust the person they are receiving the drugs from. Any steroid they take could be laced with other deadly drugs. Nothing is properly tested when it is illegal and making it legal would change how the drugs were made and tested. So bringing steroids to the open market would remove one of the major risks that athletes on steroids currently face. All this said though, injecting testosterone or something to mimic testosterone will still have major harmful affetcts on the body. Doctors and scientist can only do so much and in the end steroids would still have huge detrimental health repercussions.     

Once steroids were legalized what would happen to all the players that would prefer to stay natural? There is no question that they would inevitably be forced into using steroids. If steroids were legalized, we already know that many athletes would start doping immediately. These athletes would quickly rise to the top while natural athletes were left in the dust. Athletes that were not in the professional sector would see this as their opportunity to reach the pro level. Natural athletes would have no choice but to turn to steroids. This would mean that legalizing steroids would force every professional sports player to use steroids. Not only is this unfortunate, but it is immoral. Advocates for steroid legalization argue the point, my body, my choice. That is, athletes should be allowed to take steroids if they want and can face the health consequences if they so choose. This is flawed though because the legalization of steroids inevitably leads to no choice, forcing all athletes to take steroids in order to keep up. And the health risks that athletes would be required to take on would be far greater than losing their hair.  

Hair loss is not even a guaranteed side effect of steroids. Testosterone increases the body’s levels of DHT, which, if you are genetically prone to male pattern baldness, will accelerate your hair loss. Many people might think that health risks linked with steroids are nothing more than a myth, but they are far from a myth. From heart enlargement to impairing the body’s glucose regulation system, anabolic steroids can seriously harm a person’s body. (Performance) As stated earlier, steroids consist of testosterone or a synthetic replication of it. Testosterone is produced in large quantities naturally in the body and is responsible for multiple things, but most commonly, growth, especially in the developmental stages of one’s life, such as puberty. Known most noticeably for increasing muscular mass, it does much more than that. Testosterone is main component responsible for aggression in the brain and increased levels of this leads to excessive anger and aggression, which is where we got the term coined “roid rage”. Conversely, once a person stops injecting steroids their testosterone levels will take a precipitous drop, commonly leading to severe depression. (Dhar) Steroids also lead to hypertension, or high blood pressure from the sodium-retention properties linked with increases in testosterone levels. Sustained high blood pressure can cause enlargements to the left ventricle of the heart, which eventually will lead to heart failure. The heart has four chambers, two atriums and two ventricles. The atriums are responsible for pumping blood into the heart and the ventricles are responsible for pumping blood out of the heart. So, there are two dedicated chambers to pump blood in and then two dedicated to pumping blood out. The right ventricle is responsible for pumping blood solely to the lungs, leaving the left ventricle responsible for pumping out blood to the rest of the body. With the increased blood flow from the testosterone and the high blood pressure the left ventricle must grow to keep up. (Heart) This will certainly lead to major heart problems down the road and sadly, but most likely, heart failure. Along with this, steroids can cause arterial plaque buildup, disturb cholesterol levels and can form blood filled cavities within the liver. (Stone)

If that isn’t enough evidence to never legalize steroids in professional sports, here is one last reason. What is your favorite sport? Who is your favorite player in that sport? What if tomorrow you found out that he or she had been found guilty of doping and was facing suspension, or even worse a ban from the sport. Would you be happy? You would be disappointed and feel as though you had been cheated by this player. You looked up to them, you admired their work ethic, you were always cheering them on. Now you realize that they had tricked you, pretending to be naturally great, when in reality, they were secretly taking steroids. Sports were invented to test the limits of human performance, the winner being the pinnacle of what was humanly possible. When you inject steroids into the equation, it no longer becomes a question of human performance, but rather of drug performance. Who has the most potent drug, who has the best doping cycles. Is that truly what we want out of sports? We admire athletes for their God given abilities and their dedication to the game. People love the kid who came from nothing and worked harder than anyone to become the best at their sport. We love the innocence of sports, the never-ending work ethic that many athletes live out. Legalizing performance enhancing drugs would change sports forever and there would never be going back.  

Steroids should not be legalized in professional sports for multiple reasons, but most importantly because of the health risks they bring as well as their ability to corrupt sports altogether. If performance enhancing drugs were legalized in the end it would not fix anything. There are always going to be athletes that are looking to cheat the system. As soon as steroids were legalized they would be looking for  another way that they could cut corners. Moreover, it would lead to different kinds of drugs and different ways to manipulate the body. The WADA, has been working diligently with doctors and scientist to finally solve the steroid epidemic and end its use in sports forever. They are currently working on a brand new way of testing that could completely change the game. They are calling it the biological passport and it takes biological markers of an athlete over time. Violations can be detected by variances from athletes established levels outside permissible limits. While this is only in the works, it gives light that there may be a steroid free future ahead. Steroids are going to remain a problem for many years to come, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to give up.  
