Drug use in sports and society is reaching endemic
proportions, meaning that it is out of control.
However, most people do not know that drug and substance use in sports has a
long history. For centuries athletes at all levels of competition have taken
wide varieties of substances to aid their performances (Coakley,
2012; p. 179). To get things straight, drug and substance use is not a
new trend in sport that originated in the 1990’s; in fact it has always been a
part of sport since the very beginning. The advancement in science-technology
and widespread use are the contributing factors that have grown the drug and
substance use in sport into the major problem that it is today. So, what
exactly is a PED? A Performance-Enhancing Drug (PED)
is defined as: any substance that is taken in
non-pharmacologic doses specifically for the purposes of improving sports
performance by increasing strength, power, speed, and endurance or by altering
body composition and weight. After my class had an understanding of what
classifies a PED, we were given a couple minutes to break off into pairs and to
come up with five reasons that athletes use PED’s. When we all returned to the
class discussion most of the people were asked to share one of their reasons.
It only took about to the midway point of our class until we had covered all of
the reasons for use of drugs. I have listed all of these reasons below:
Reasons Athletes take Performance-Enhancing
Drugs
P
To recover from injury quicker and to mask any
pain
P
Desire to be the best at all costs
P
Winning provides greater financial rewards
P
To make the most of a short life in sports
P
Influenced by others to improve performance
immorally
P
The will to win overrides moral conscience
P
Better results lead to better sponsorship and
endorsement contracts
P
Natural ability is not good enough
P
Willing to risk cheating for public acclaim
P
To meet other’s expectations
All of these reasons are legit
and understandable. In today’s sport the level of competition is at an all-time
high and looks to keep rising, which creates a high sense of urgency among
athletes to keep up with these standards in order to keep their job. In order
for some individuals to be able to keep up with today’s elite level of
performance, PED use is the answer. In my opinion, PED use should not be tolerated and
is cheating. PED use has hit baseball the hardest, as records are being
broken and challenged by now-condemned PED users. It’s gotten out of hand to
the point where there are congressional discussions about whether an asterisk should by placed by these newly set
records, i.e. Barry Bonds’ career home run record. My response is, yes the
guilty players cheated by enhancing their strength, but as a batter you still
have to be able to swing the bat and make solid contact with the ball to then
use your power to drive it out of the ballpark. The same applies for pitchers,
as they still have to be able to locate their pitches while maintaining the
correct mechanics in order to be successful. With this being said, I agree that
using PED’s is cheating and should not be acceptable, but I disagree with
adding an asterisk beside any record.
This past August, It was
reported by the Associated Press that Oakland Athletics’ pitcher Bartolo Colon received
a 50-game suspension for testing positive for
testosterone. At the time, Colon’s suspension was the second in a one
week period that earlier saw the San Francisco Giants’ outfielder Melky Cabrera
suspended for the exact same violation. This occurred in late-August during the
Athletics’ hunt for the playoffs. As stated in the article A’s players, Grant Balfour and Brandon McCarthy
both expressed their surprise of the violation, but also stated that Colon’s
suspension would leave a hole in the starting pitcher rotation, but still
insured that the team would find a way into the playoffs. Despite Colon’s
50-game suspension for testing positive for testosterone, the Athletics would
give us one of the most exciting finishes to the baseball regular season in
recent years. The A’s overcame a 5 game deficit in the final two weeks in order
to come back and win the A.L. West division on the final day of the regular
season. They would lose an exciting five- game playoff series to Detroit. Bartolo
Colon’s selfish decision of using testosterone ended up not costing his team
and us baseball fans a fantastic finish to the season, but it does not excuse the fact that he cheated and could have
cost his team.
Performance-Enhancing Drug use
in sports is NOT acceptable, but the question that resides is how to stop it.
One thing that really got my attention during our class lecture was that PED use mostly begins in Junior High School.
People! We r talking about 12 and 13 year old kids who are beginning to use
steroids, this is ridiculous! Children in Junior High School should be nowhere
near steroids or any other Performance-Enhancing Drugs. They are just beginning
puberty and starting to grow and develop. Most children have no idea of any
side-effects; let alone how to properly use these drugs. The answer to solving
this endemic, is to start by putting an end to PED use in Junior High and High
School kids and then to migrate up to the college and professional levels. For
sports to keep their integrity, the use of Performance-Enhancing Drugs by
athletes at all levels has to be put into extinction.
For more on Bartolo Colon's suspension: http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-08-22/bartolo-colon-suspension-drug-testsuspended-50-games-ped-use
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