Anabolic Steroids In The 1930's

People of the WADA I stand here today with a proposal, which will improve and revolutionized the sports world. I propose for performance enhancing drugs to be allowed in professional sports. Steroids and other illicit performance enhancing drugs have become the biggest scourge of professional sports leagues, and that’s why it is time they were made legal. PED’s or steroids became a problem around the early 1940’s and since then no one has been able to stop them. They started being used by the USSR for the Olympic Games and at the time the Soviet Union was dominating in every single sport, now performance enhancement drugs (PED’s) have come a long way and are a lot more complex, but one issue is still common; the moral rights concerning them.

The performance enhancing drugs particularly anabolic steroids have become increasingly common in competitive sport. Even though the performance enhancing drugs have been banned by all major sports organizations including the Olympics, FIFA, and NFL. The World Anti-Doping Agency has introduced very strict rules and penalties for participants who are caught using performance-enhancing drugs. However the industry keeps finding a way to produce more sophisticated performance enhancing drugs, so tests have to be updated almost every week. So ''Is it possible to eliminate performance enhancing drugs from the competitive sport? ''

The term steroids are normally associated with drugs that are used to treat many medical conditions. Steroids do have many medical purposes, such as, maintaining sexual characteristics in males following them having surgery for testicular cancer and the loss of muscle tissue. They are also used to increase muscle mass, bone mass, inflammation, and other medical conditions. (mayoclinic.com 2014) Anabolic steroids, which mean use of something that causes a building of tissue, are a class of synthetic drugs that are designed to copy the effects of testosterone. Testosterone main effect is the tissue.

I am writing to you with all due respect under the terms of steroid use. I am aware that you think steroids should be legal. In 1994 1,084,000 people said to have taken anabolic steroids. Steroids are taken by athletes everywhere in lots of different forms. There are injections, pills, and topical creams and different types of drugs such as anabolic steroids; which are the most popular.

"Bigger, Faster, Stronger" is the motto of the athlete, or at least for many athletes. Sports are something quite special; they drive our testosterone levels through the roof and may give great or horrible feelings! Fans, at times, can be very crazy; they will cheer their teams 24/7, cry when the teams lose, and celebrate when the teams win. Humans have been attracted to competition for a long time; sports can be traced to ancient times. Football (soccer) is believed to have evolved in China in the 3rd century B.C. and the first sports event ever recorded was in Greece in 776 B.C. (Wood).

The question which is on most people minds is what to do with the records of those who are caught using steroids. In a 2005 ESPN poll, more than 60% of respondents wanted the player who used steroids to have their records erased and to eliminate them from the possibility in joining the Baseball Hall of Fame (Cohen, 2005). In an NPR poll, 45% wanted a steroid abuser to have their records stricken from the archives of baseball (Memmott, 2013). MLB should implement a program where on day one all players are briefed about what will happen and to ensure it has consequences. One implementation to this policy is that those in violation while using steroids will cause their team to forfeit any and all games in which that player played.

Since the conception of the Olympic games in ancient Greece, athletes have been participating in competitive sporting events to prove physical supremacy and acquire the honor and societal hierarchy that could be earned by the victors. In this infantile-era of athletic competition, the primary motivation for these athletes was simply to earn the coveted gold medal and obtain social prestige. However, in today’s hypercompetitive societal environment, a generic slab of gold is not a sufficient incentive to motivate world-class athletes. Immense financial compensation has driven participants in these games to push the limits and bend the rules to the point of breaking in order to gain the greatest advantage over their opponents. In the modern sporting era, the most accessible way to gain this advantage is by supplementing training with anabolic steroids.

Performance enhancing drugs, also known as PEDs, surprisingly have been around since the late 1800’s. First making an appearance in baseball, a player named Pud Galvin used a serum created by physiologist Charles Brown-Sequard to acquire an advantage over his competitors. While Pud’s case of drug use isn’t very well known, PEDs are seen all throughout sports today. These drugs are illegally used in order for an athlete to attain an unfair advantage over the opposition. Cases in recent history include Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez.

Anabolic steroids are a synthetic derivative of testosterone. Anabolic steroids promote the storage of protein and the growth of tissue. It was created to treat hypogonadism, which is a condition in which the testes do not produce enough testosterone for normal growth, and sexual functioning. There is no cure for hypogonadism; however, anabolic steroids are used for treatment. A few years after they were made, people began illegally using them for body building.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs are the most prescribed medications for treating conditions such as arthritis. Most people are familiar with over-the-counter, non-prescription NSAIDs, such as aspirin and ibuprofen. NSAIDs are more than just pain relievers. They also help reduce inflammation and lower fevers. They prevent blood from clotting, which is good in some cases but not so beneficial in others.