Blog Week 4 Homework

           In this video, CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen describes why professional athletes take performance enhancing drugs (PED’s), and the negative side effects of them. Cohen explains that there are multiple types of PED’s, each that have different effects. Cyclists, for example, will choose a PED that improves their stamina. Baseball players will choose PED’s that will give them more strength so they can hit the ball farther. Cohen explains that while some PED’s are legal with a doctor’s subscription, some sports ban those PED’s anyways. Some PED’s, such as Human Growth Hormones (HGH), are given to children by doctors in order to help them grow or gain weight. Athletes get their hands on PED’s and abuse them, using them for the wrong reason. Athletes are tempted to take PED’s because often times it is very difficult for organizations to catch them. Since the 1960’s, professional sports have recognized the need to stop drug use and have begun implementing the testing of athletes. Often times, athletes will be tested directly after competition. While PED’s offer benefits for athletes, there are also negative side effects. These include the changing of behaviors. This is known as roid rage. Athletes can also become depressed, and develop more serious issues like diabetes and heart conditions.

This video is a clip from a show on the NBA network. In the video, former basketball players such as Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Kerr, and Charles Barkley discuss performance enhancing drugs. Each offer their own thoughts and input. Kerr argues that athletes do not know what drugs are illegal or legal, and believes that there is a gray area between legal and illegal drugs, especially because new drugs are constantly being created. Barkley claims that the issue has less to do with morality, and more to do with the economy. He states that athletes who come from poor beginnings will take PED’s in order to gain a competitive edge and earn thousands or millions of dollars to support their family. Barkley also says that athletes who are almost good enough to play professionally resort to drugs to give them the edge in order to play professionally. O’Neal claims that the media and fans create such pressure to win for athletes that they naturally make poor decisions in order to live up to their expectations. For this reason, O’Neal says that many athletes take PED’s.

            These segments were interesting to me, because I was able to see different perspectives on drug use from the media and from athletes themselves. The CNN video made it clear that they think PED’s are negative substances to abuse with the intent to enhance athletic performance. While these NBA athletes did not necessarily oppose anything that Cohen said from the CNN video explicitly, it is clear that they had sympathy for athletes who take drugs in order to improve their performance. If anything, they actually seemed to make the audience think that we should not be so harsh on athletes when they get caught for taking such drugs, because of the immense amount of pressure that they are all under. This is understandable, since they themselves are all former professional athletes. I think that O’Neal and Barkley believe that drug use from their playing careers (mainly in the 1990’s) was just a part of the culture in sports  that they were living through.


 Works Cited
CNN Explains: Performance Enhancing Drugs. Perf. Elizabeth Cohen. YouTube. CNN, 23 July 2013.
Web. 22 Sept. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0DIY-UDwXA>.

Open Court: Performance Enhancing Drugs. Perf. Steve Kerr, Charles Barkly, and Shaquille
O'Neal. NBAA. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2017.
            <http://www.nba.com/video/channels/nba_tv/2013/06/05/open-court-performance-enhancing-
            drugs.nba>.

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