Steroids in Sports

If you're a professional athlete there is no doubt the thought of steroids has crossed your mind; after all, you are paid to play and you are paid to play well. If you are an amateur athlete there is no doubt the thought of steroids has crossed your mind; you are not paid to play but in many cases a good performance will lead to that end. Many call steroids in sports cheating, unfair, etc. but as long as money is involved and the promise of more money exist based on performance, steroids in sports will always exist.

Here's the bottom line; if you participate in a sport that bans performance enhancing drugs and you choose to use these drugs, yes, you are cheating. Take baseball, it is against the rules to use a corked bat and if you are using steroids in baseball in many ways you’re now the corked bat yourself. However, steroids in sports and steroid laws are often misguided or rather contradictory to what's reasonable.

Let's look at baseball; professional baseball has endured a fire storm from hell the past decade due to increased evidence of steroid use; do not confuse that with an increase in steroid use but rather an increase in evidence. When many major league players start out they are in the early to mid-twenties; as they grow older their natural hormone production falls, as it does with us all as we age. So what many players have done is to take in exogenous hormones in order to reach hormonal levels comparable to those of when they first began. Is this unfair? If their hormone levels remain low they won't be able to play as well, if they can’t play as well they cannot be paid. It's really very simple and often confused in an unneeded way but money is the bottom line and is the reason for steroids in sports and as long as money is the bottom line steroids in sports will always be as common as bats in baseball.

Congress

The U.S. congress has stood on its soap box for several years complaining about keeping sports pure and clean. They insinuate, as does the mainstream media that steroids in sports has only recently truly become rampant. Being as steroids have been a part of major athletic competition since the 1950's either congress and the media is made of bumbling idiots or two groups oblivious to reality; probably a little of both. But let's be clear, if it is against the rules to use steroids in sports, as it is with most sports governing bodies, you shouldn't use them but how does this play into effect for the “every day guy?” Is it fair to put him under the same rule of law, is it fair to deny him what he is entitled to under the clause of liberty? It’s very easy to make an argument on behalf of the recreational steroid user, much more than it is for the user of steroids in sports regardless of the sport but a revamping and reexamination of those laws in both cases, for that an argument can easily be made.

Sports Competition

When it comes to sports competition, it is engrained in us at an early age to use every tool at our disposal to gain an advantage. Early on young athletes learn the harder they train, the better they eat the better they’ll perform. Now, to be clear, I am not insinuating that children should be allowed to use steroids; of course they shouldn't, there is plenty of evidence, actual medical data that shows how harmful it can be to children; but this data does not exist for healthy male adults. So when it comes to steroids in sports should the law read differently? How about training, can you not make the same “Fair” argument regarding training or more so for nutrition? Take two ball players in any sport; both genetically identical. They train and eat just the same and then one day one of them begins eating more protein. He will undoubtedly gain more muscle mass, his strength will increase thereby increasing his performance. Is he now cheating? Now if the rules of his sport say “You can only eat 200g of protein per day” then yes, if he eats more he is cheating but can you see the parallel as it applies to steroids in sports? Has the guy who ate more protein done anything not available to his counterpart? Of course not, he simply chose to do whatever he could to be better; and if it’s professional sports he now makes more money and as we said earlier, when it comes to sports and steroids in sports, money is the name of the game.