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People's objections to steroids seem to centre around two key arguments. 1) It's dangerous and 2) It's unfair.

1) Steroids are dangerous.
This is simply untrue. Steroids are used in a variety of medical treatments

Steroid *abuse* is certainly not ideal and does cause some physical complications. However some of this is because steroids are illegal and athletes therefore lack important information about how to properly use steroids. They also need to keep their use a secret and are therefore less able to seek help if problems do arise.

However, we should not simply condemn steroids because they are dangerous. Crash dieting and dehydrating to make a weight division in boxing or wrestling is dangerous and yet we do not try to stop that. Taking painkillers in order to play through injury is even more damaging and yet we applaud that.

If we expect professional athletes to put their bodies on the line week after week for us

2) It's unfair.
Steroids are not a magic pill. Sticking a needle in your butt does not magically make your muscles bigger. Steroids, like a million other substances, allow the user to recover faster and therefore train more. Steroids only enhance performance, they do not create it. The athlete still has to go out and do even more hard training to damage the muscles enough that they are stimulated to grow. If working harder than your rivals is unfair, we may as well stop keeping score.

The history of sports is a history of performance enhancing supplements and other technological advancements as much as it is a story of humans striving to become Swifter, Higher, Stronger. The Ancient Greeks used a wide variety of substances, including testicular extracts and toxic fungi, to try and make their Olympic athletes better. We do not think that creatine is unfair, or Gatorade, or sports massage, so why are steroids unfair? They are unfair because they are illegal and they are illegal because they are unfair.

The only thing that is unfair about steroids is that they are illegal and this penalises athletes who do respect the rules.

Steroid use should be allowed in professional sports. It would be less dangerous and fairer. It would also improve the fans experience as we would be seeing better prepared and more physically capable athletes.

Learn more about this author, Richard Bulkeley.
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