Blog Week 8

       In this blog post, I will be presenting the opposition of my stance on performance enhancing drugs. My stance is clear. Performance enhancing drugs should remain illegal and athletes that are caught taking them should be banned from their respective sport for life. Use of illegal drugs or banned substances is cheating. 
       Not all people think this. I have read four articles that oppose my position. Each article claims that performance enhancing drugs should be made legal. They claim that the legalization of these drugs would be better than keeping them illegal. They have reasons. I just do not agree with them. Here is what they think:
       Raymar Tirado published an article in the Huffington Post, titled Is it Time to Say yes to Steroids in Professional Sports?. Tirado's biggest point is that professional sports are businesses. Their overall goal is to make money. They do this by bringing revenue from ticket and merchandise sales. That, largely, is due to the fans of the sport. If steroids are made legal, then athletes can perform better. They can tackle harder, hit balls farther, and run faster. This is entertaining, and provides more business. Tirado also makes the point that we do the same thing in our everyday lives. He says that we are all addicts of something, whether it is our cell phones, other people, coffee, or anything that allows us to do things faster or more efficiently. Tirado also says that these athletes did not get to be professional by taking steroids. He claims that steroids only enhance their already amazing talent (Tirado 1).
       The next article I read was by Jeffrey Katz, from NPR. Katz's main point was that "it is hypocritical for society to encourage consumers to seek drugs to treat all sorts of ailments and conditions but to disdain drug use for sports" (Katz 1). I find this very irrelevant. For everyone that is not an athlete, it is not cheating to take medicine or drugs in order to get better from a sickness. There is no competition that is paying everyone millions of dollars to compete in. It is not cheating. 
       In another article I read, written by Tyler Lemco and published by CBS Sports, the author makes more valid claims. His support resonates with Tirado's. Lemco focuses on the fact that the goal of sports is to provide entertainment for the general public. If athletes are allowed to perform at even higher levels, then spectators will keep coming back and back again. Lemco uses himself as an example, saying that he is not a fan of baseball, yet he followed Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds as they all broke home run records (Lemco 1). While Lemco's points are better, one fault I find here is that he uses himself as an example.

       Here are a few quotes from the sources above that supports their claim:

"After all, the steroids didn’t make him a great ball player, they just amplified the skills he already had. I could take all the steroids in the world but if you put me at the plate and throw me a 90mph fast ball, the only thing I’m going to do is get the hell out of the way." - Raymar Tirado

"These athletes already have such an advantage in training, equipment, medical care, etc that the concept of restricting their access to a performance enhancing drug is like telling a diabetic that they can use insulin but not the pump that automatically regulates its flow into the body."- Raymar Tirado

"Others maintain that it is hypocritical for society to encourage consumers to seek drugs to treat all sorts of ailments and conditions but to disdain drug use for sports. They say the risk to athletes has been overstated and that the effort to keep them from using performance-enhancing drugs is bound to fail." Jeffrey Katz

 "These athletes, whether performing legally or illegally, did something to turn a non-spectator into a spectator. They entertained, they captured people’s attention, and they performed their sport at the highest imaginable level (even beyond human capabilities). Is that not the purpose of sports, to be a source of entertainment?" - Tyler Lemco


Works Cited
Katz, Jeffrey. "Should We Accept Steroid Use in Sports?" NPR. NPR, 23 Jan. 2008. Web.
Lemco, Tyler. "Lemco: Why Steroids Should Be Allowed In Sports." CBS Local Sports. N.p., 9 June
        2015. Web.
Tirado, Raymmar. "Is It Time to Say Yes to Steroids in Professional Sports?" The Huffington Post.
        TheHuffingtonPost.com, 05 Nov. 2014. Web.

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