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Steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs should absolutely be permitted by professional athletes. To decry their usage is either intentionally or naively ignorant of historical and current reality. The position advocates instituting a specialized mindset that involves denying professional athletes the same or equivalent rights that are enjoyed by non-professional athletes, or non-athletes for that matter. It also embraces the notion that somehow professional sports are "pure", and are not strictly a business and entertainment industry. Given the way professional sports and its athletes are perceived and treated by the masses and the media alike is it any wonder that athletes expend considerable amounts of time and energy to pursue those things which might give them a competitive advantage?

Athletes have the same rights and are entitled to the same considerations as non-athletes. The hazards and dangers of steroid use are well documented and publicized. As the vast majority of professional athletes are well-educated adults who are fully capable of making rational decisions, is it acceptable to establish a code or set of laws that denies them the right to employ that ability?

To establish policies and regulations that forbid the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs is dangerous and self defeating. Administration of those drugs could be easily overseen by a trained physician who could not only monitor the athlete's health and physical response, but who could control the types and dosages of the various substances. Outlawing their use simply encourages the athletes to seek out alternative avenues of acquisition. As the technology develops to assay for qualitative and quantitative levels of performance enhancing substances is developed, new methods of either avoiding detection, or new substances are formulated. The whole process is a very costly and dangerous cat-and-mouse game.

To say that professional athletics worldwide is big business is a gross understatement. Regardless of what country you live in, everyone is exposed to media attention and mass exposure to some type of professional sports. It is this mass media exposure to professional sports that both creates and feeds the controversy. The vast sums of money involved at every level in-and-of itself generate interest. As the fiscal ramifications of being either an individual or team "winner" are substantial, the impetus and motivation to find ways to maximize performance are inherent. In short, we as fans perpetuate steroid use with our hard earned entertainment money.

Our relationship with and attraction to various sports begins as children when we are introduced to sport as a recreational activity. For those who develop any kind of skill, it becomes a mechanism for validating one aspect of a positive self image. For those who don't develop any athletic skills, it becomes a source of negative feelings. Either way, sports inculcates very strong emotions and feelings. As we mature, we ascribe those same set of feelings towards what we perceive as being the professional version of the same activity. When you couple those emotions along with a sense of regional loyalty and identification, any debate or controversy surrounding professional sports is going to evoke strong emotional, rather than logical, reasoned assertions. What we should do when considering the merits of this debate is to intellectually divorce ourselves from the emotions involved, and examine it from an informed and reality-based perspective.

Learn more about this author, Victor Mikulin.
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