Logic and Critical Thinking

Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized

The illegal use of anabolic steroids by professional athletes is often a hot button topic in the news. Steroids were banned due to the negative side effects associated with its use. Despite the ban, many athletes are suspected of illicit steroid use to enhance their performance. There is great cost associated with random testing to determine if such athletes use steroids. Anne Whitaker and Rosalyn Carson-Dewitt, in the article, “Point: Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized”, make a somewhat effective argument as to why it should be legalized.
This article provides an argument for the legalization of anabolic steroid use by athletes. The authors parallel the use of cosmetic surgery and unhealthy diet regimens by models and actresses and the use of steroids by professional athletes to stay at the top of their games. The authors provide factual information regarding steroids and the effects its use has on the body, followed by their opinion as to how legalization would benefit not only the sports world, but also society as a whole.
Whitaker and Carson-Dewitt provide a number of facts regarding the characteristics of steroids, the effects of their use, and the history of its illegalization. They describe different methods for use: cycling (on and off use of a particular dose), stacking (taking multiple steroids simultaneously), and pyramiding (increasing and decreasing the dosage over time) (Whitaker and Carson-Dewitt, 2011). The authors go on to describe the physical effects of steroid use such as organ damage, stroke, cancer and high blood pressure (Whitaker and Carson-Dewitt, 2011). The authors then provide a timeline as to the banning of steroid use in various professional sports organizations followed by a national ban.
It is the opinion of Carson-Dewitt and Whitaker that steroids should be legalized. They opined that legalization would have manifold benefits: increased safety and regulation of steroid use, decreased access and use of steroids by teenaged children; and reduction in the costs associated with testing. While, on the surface, these opinions seem to be logical, the arguments are not all supported by facts. The claim that legalization of steroids would reduce its use by teenagers, simply because they would be prescribed by doctors, is baseless. Teenagers would likely continue to access steroids through the same methods currently used. The cost of testing may or may not be reduced as regulation would still limit the amount of steroids to be safely used. Testing would still occur to verify that legal safe limits were observed.
The factual information contained in the article is sufficient to provide a perspective from which to understand the authors’ argument. The authors fail, however to provide factual information to support their claims. This results in an argument that sounds plausible on the surface, but falls flat with any amount of critical thinking. For this reason, I believe the authors failed to make a compelling argument.

References

Carson-Dewitt, Rosalyn, and Whitaker, Ann. “Point: Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized.” By: Points of View: Steroids, 2011.

References: Carson-Dewitt, Rosalyn, and Whitaker, Ann. “Point: Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Legalized.” By: Points of View: Steroids, 2011.