Miles Savell
Mrs. Jones
English 083
11 October 2015

Drug Abuse

Performance­enhancing drugs are used by athletes illegally for the right and wrong reasons by athletes everywheres. Athletes use these drugs to pick up their game, for injury recovery, and if they feel like they aren’t strong enough and want to get big as fast as possible.
Performance­enhancing drugs are proven to increase strength and endurance by any athlete that uses them correctly. I believe that this stimulating drug should be legal in sports everywheres because all it does is make you stronger! San Francisco's former baseball player Barry Bonds, was “convicted for lying under oath about using performance­enhancing drugs.”(Johnson,476) Bonds said that he was given steroids without his knowledge, says that he thought he was given flax seed oil and cream to help ease muscle ache. Known for his record of home runs hit in his Major League career, but in order to hit home runs, the player needs to make contact! Steroids did not improve how Barry barrelled up the ball, he did himself. He also put on 45 pounds of muscle within 3 years, which is another sign of steroid use. The use of performance­enhancing drugs should be legal and used by athletes. If you think about it, records will be broken, and sports ratings will rise drastically! As a baseball fan, I would love to see this happen, along with the rest of the sports world. Savell
1

Lance Armstrong, the world’s best cyclist known to mankind, admitted to performance­enhancing drugs such as EPO, testosterone, cortisone, steroids, and blood doping. If you don’t know what EPO (erythropoietin) is, it’s a hormone developed by the human body to make more red blood cells. Using EPO will increase the amount of oxygen to the user's muscles, this will also help them gain endurance and recover faster. Blood doping is also another action that Armstrong and his teammates were accused of, this is done when red blood cell count is high and transfused back into the athlete. What is dangerous about blood doping and transfusions, is the blood can thicken, and clog arteries, causing a blood clot. When Lance was pleaded guilty of using performance­enhancing drugs, he was stripped of his seven Tour de
France titles and his bronze medal from the Olympics in 2000. “
The charges against Armstrong are all too common in the cycling world.” (Wilson, CNN) Sure, Armstrong was stripped of all his greatest accomplishments, but he said he wouldn’t change a decision that he made! Even though what he did was illegal, it should still count! Sure the drugs helped him succeed, but the man had cancer! He shouldn’t be stripped of his accomplishments after coming back from fighting cancer and using a little bit of drugs to help him compete with everyone else. “Alex Rodriguez came clean Monday about three tainted seasons of his career, admitting to using performance­enhancing drugs in an interview with ESPN.” (Hoch, MLB.com) Alex confessed to reporters that he experimented with steroids when he was with the Texas Rangers in
2001­2003. He said he wanted to do them to prove to everyone he was worth a $252 million contract which would have been record setting at the time.
"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure," Rodriguez said. "I felt like I had all the weight of the

Savell
2

world on top of me, and I needed to perform and perform at a high level every day. (Hoch,
MLB.com) Rodriguez’s stats changed immensely after he took steroids, before he had taken them he had hit 189 home runs within the first six years of being a major leaguer. In the first three years of using steroids he hit 156 home runs! Looking at stats like Alex’s during this time would make everyone think he is using performance­enhancing drugs, and they were right.
Opposite from Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez was sorry for what he had done. He apologized countless times to all fans and also to the Rangers organization. He donated $3.9 million to the
University of Miami, the school that he would have attended before he was the first overall draft pick by the Mariners in ‘93. I still believe as a former baseball player that these drugs should be legal. Yes, steroids made him stronger, but did the steroids improve his technique? The answer is no, the drug can only improve strength and endurance after all.
If A­Rod didn’t make solid contact with the ball like he did, then it would be impossible to do what he did. Think of it like this, if he didn’t have as much success as he did would commissioners and fans question if he was using steroids? Athletes are focused on when they are constantly being successful, and officials think it’s too good to be true so they want to test the player for any illegal substances.
Let the athlete use them and not be punished! If they were legal, fans will see baseball like no other. In the end, performance­enhancing drugs do not help the athlete develop better fundamentals. How athletes play the game fundamentally comes from what is taught to them.
The sports world would unlock so much talent that no one could fathom if enhancing drugs were legal. It should be legal in sports, and if an athlete wants to use them, let them use them. If an

Savell
3

athlete chooses not to take enhancing drugs, then they don’t have to, but don’t get mad about other athletes out­performing you during the season. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”
(Jamie Foxx)

Work Cited Wilson, Jacque. "Lance Armstrong's Doping Drugs." Online posting.
Cnn.
N.p., 18 Jan. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
.

Hoch, Brian. "Rodriguez Reveals He Cheated, Lied." LB. N.p., 10 Feb.
M
2009. Web. 11 Oct. 2015. . Johnson, Michael D.
Drug Abuse Among Athletes n Concert Reading &
.
I
Writing
. Second ed. Niagara County: McWhorter, 2014. 423­96. Print

Savell
4