Open Discussion:
Should athletes be allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs?
CNN is featuring an op-ed by Ellis Cashmore, a professor of culture, media and sport in the UK wherein Cashmore asserts that athletes should be treated like adults and allowed to make decisions for themselves about their own health and drug use.
No sensible observer of sport today denies the prevalence of drugs in practically every major sport, yet none would argue they can ever be eliminated completely. Money alone guarantees that much. The days of the gentleman-amateur have long gone: Athletes today are competing for high stakes, not just millions, but dozens of millions (Armstrong is worth about $70 million, according to Forbes).
In a culture that encourages the constant search for the limits of human achievement, we, the fans, the consumers of popular sports entertainment, revel in record-breaking, gravity-defying, barely believable feats on the field of play. Promoters, leagues, sponsors, advertisers and a miscellany of other interested parties dangle incentives.
Do you agree with Cashmore that the drugs are there anyway, and that we should stop being such a hypocritical culture? Or should we try to keep the playing field level by not allowing performance-enhancing drugs in any way, shape or form?
How do we enforce that?
What a strange concept! Something is wrong, and since we know people are going to do it even though it’s wrong… just say its ok??? I can’t even wrap my mind around that!! Why would we do that??! I can only imagine what kind of life would await my children in the their adulthood if I just gave up trying to teach them right from wrong because I knew they would do those wrong things regardless… no! If someone decides they don’t want to follow the rules than they better be ready to pay the consequences! Sure there’s a difference… Read more »
Alcohol would be a good comparison,
well, the comparison is the prohibition* era in the USA – is alcohol still a banned drug? (and it is a drug, quite a dangerous one)
* anyone know who were the prime movers in the temperance lobby that got alcohol banned 😉
From someone who used to juice, short answer is no. It changes you. I could absorb strikes like it was nothing. I didn’t feel the cold and would just be angry for no reason sometimes. A friend of mine who was on it said that he always felt like either f-cking or fighting. Roid rage is real. Look at what happened to Chris Benoit. Ban them and not just for athletes.
I think PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs)should be allowed. I remember a UK excyclist saying that being an elite cyclist shortens the lifespan. I assume he was talking about clean riding. I could believe it, given the degree of punishment the body takes. Are PEDs correctly dosed, anymore dangerous than any other part of the training regime? – Athletes from all sports do seem to pick up alot of injuries. With some causing post retirement pain, mobility problems etc. To be honest from reading the opinions of those understanding of the drug testing science. I always thought the threshold in sport drug… Read more »
I don’t think we should just accept anything and everything that an athlete might do to improve performance. Past a certain point it’s just cheating, and then you aren’t really playing the same game anymore. It’s reasonable to prevent a sprinter from grafting himself onto the back of a horse in order to go faster. Don’t let the wheelchair racers attach a sail to their chairs, and don’t let the defensive ends wear brass knuckles. Past a certain point, it’s not really an athlete competing against another athlete, but one pharmaceutical company competing against another. There ought to be some… Read more »
Training at high altitude provides a “natural” kind of doping, sort of, so how is it different to simulate high altitude in other ways?
Wello, I think the only reason the notorious altitude tents that some athletes sleep in werent banned, is because it would have been too hard to police. It would have been true keystone cops territory , although some athletes say we have already entered the land of farce
Just because we know people will do drugs, we should just legalize it. Just because we know some people will murder, we should not bother trying to enforce it because it’s hard to stop it. Is there any difference? Some people might say that these examples are much more extreme, or that doping is not such a big deal, but doping has negative consequential effects on the body. Also, as role models, these athletes are telling the generation that looks up to them to do whatever necessary to achieve the top of their game, regardless of the consequences inherent to… Read more »
I would make a distinction between hurting someone else and hurting only yourself. It’s not always an absolute distinction, but I think it’s a good guideline for making laws restricting people’s behavior. The difference between murdering someone else and risking one’s own health by taking drugs seems pretty clear to me. I don’t think totally consensual activities should be crimes.