Steroid Use in High School Sports

Steroids: The Deadly Decision
Sports can teach us so many things. We learn to take responsibility, work hard towards a common goal, and sportsmanship towards one another. The basis of these principles isn’t taught in the big leagues but in the midst of high school sports where most find their passion for a sport. This is the level where a strong foundation for these principles is built. High school sports provide an outlet for some students as well as a place for healthy competition until the competition gets too intense. When this happens, athletes try to get ahead anyway they can even if it isn’t allowed. Most anabolic steroids are not just looked down upon but illegal. Doping is a common term for using performance-enhancing steroids. Steroid use in high school sports should be banned because it leads to severe health problems, gives an unfair advantage, and defeats the purpose for high school sports.
While most of these steroids are illegal by law, there are some steroids that are considered “legal” making it seem okay and safe to use without thinking of the long-term effects they can have. Anabolic steroids, in simple terms, are hormone-boosters in the body. When certain hormone levels in the body are increased, one effect is rapid increase in muscle mass, which is the desired result of using steroids. Then there are also effects that many people don’t consider when doping. The effects can be things such as acne and balding, but much more serious problems can occur like hear/liver disease/damage, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes. Caroline K. Hatton is quoted in her book The Night Olympic Team saying, “In a curious dichotomy, perhaps the only area where there is no doubt or controversy is when it comes to young people: these drugs, especially anabolic steroids, are unanimously considered harmful to the young" (Hatton). With the controversy of whether they should be legalized or not, many can agree upon the fact that anabolic steroids pose great risk to young athletes. Educating high school athletes about these things can teach them how to make good choices about not just taking drugs but also life decisions.
High school sports have the extraordinary ability to teach student athletes about many things in life. They teach us to work hard for a common goal and give us that fire and passion to go out there and get it. They teach us how to be responsible for learning the game and balancing school with practices and games. They teach us to always get up when we are pushed down. They teach us how to work with one another. They teach us to respect one another with the decisions they make and how we react to them. This comes from the bond between coach and athlete as well as good peer pressure. From now and then, bad peer pressure and social pressures to perform to the best of one’s ability and beyond push athletes to a breaking point. In an online article published by the Association Against Steroid Abuse (AASA) they write,”The better you perform, the higher your reward; conversely, the weaker you perform the less you are rewarded and often this lesser reward equates to no reward at all. Because of this reason athletes and steroids, this relationship will always exist; it has been born out of necessity and we as a society have created the footing and we hold the gate key” (“Athletes and Steroids”). This shows truly how much our society intensifies sports to entertain us and consequently pushes the athletes to such extremes. Sports, especially at this level, should never be pushed to that intensity and always be fun for the athletes as well as the fans. Sports convey a message with every action and rule in place, good or bad. With steroids legalized in competition, gives the message that it is okay to use drugs, even encouraged, as well as validates cheating.
Just as if a swimmer was pulling on the lane rope during a swim race of cutting through the course in a cross country race, using steroids in cheating. We are all born with extraordinary talent in something unique to us. Genetics naturally gives some people advantages in sports while others aren’t so lucky. When these people use steroids to make up for their lacking in genes, it takes away the competitive edge sports gives because if there was a choice between working hard for hours on end and just taking steroids, many would pick steroids as an easier option. “There are several reasons to ban performance-enhancing drugs: respect for the rules f sports, recognitions that natural talents and their perfection are the point of sports, and the prospect of an ‘arms race’ in athletic performance…” (Murray). Here, Thomas H. Murray, PhD, argues against steroids because they take away the natural talent of very gifted people. Competition is all about showing off one’s talents and how hard athletes work to get to that level of competition.
When arguing that steroids make competition unfair for some, many people that are pro on this topic will say that if everybody is allowed to use them, then there is no advantage for one athlete over another. This claim is not only wrong but dangerous. Whether steroids are allowing in competition or not, there will always be some people that will not be able to use steroids because of things such as cost or personal beliefs and moral. Athletes then will also feel compelled to use because that is the only way that they can compete at the level of doping athletes. This will lead to steroid use being as common in sports as using helmets in football or shin guards in soccer. Quoted from an article titled "Yes or No? Question of the Week: Drugs in Sport," published in The Times (London), former Chief Executive of UK Sports states, "As the national anti-doping agency we will never accept this. Performance-enhancing drugs are not only prohibited because they violate the spirit of sport but because they can damage the health of athletes. The idea of allowing them in sport could lead to a situation whereby sportsmen and women are used as human guinea pigs for a constant flow of new, unregulated substances. The long-term effects don 't bear thinking about” (Callicott).With virtually every athlete doping for competition and performance, the health risk of playing sports skyrockets. If these factors do come into play at such a basic level of sport, it loses its appeal, and high school sports is where many people find a passion for certain sports as well as their true talents.
Steroids should never be allowed in sports at any level, let alone at the high school level, because of the health risks it presents, it keeps the purity and excitement of high school sports, and cheating should never be tolerated. Every athlete should have to compete with their own natural talents as well as work hard and practice to become better at their sports. It is not fair when an athlete takes a month break from a sport looking like David and returning like Goliath. Not only is it unfair to give oneself this type of advantage but, in most cases, illegal. Many athletes jump into doping without even knowing the full effect that these performance enhancing steroids have on their minds and bodies. Educating every student athlete, even in the slightest way like having a coach take twenty minutes to have a brief discussion about it, could make that athlete think twice before fully indulging their body into the health risks. It should also be made harder to obtain steroids. Just by going online and searching for steroids, sites offering “legal” steroids will begin to show up in the thousands. While making it harder to get these steroids, steroid testing should occur more often because the fear of having random drug tests would be another incentive to not use performance-enhancing drugs; this only works if there are actual drugs tests being administered. With steroids out of the picture, sports are preserved in the way they were intended to be, playing with a passion for the sport and nothing else.

Work Cited
Assael, Shaun. Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School : The Secret History of America 's True Drug Addiction. New York, NY: ESPN, 2007. Print.

"Athletes and Steroids - SteroidAbuse .com." Athletes and Steroids - SteroidAbuse .com. Association Against Steroid Abuse, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://www.steroidabuse.com/athletes-and-steroids.html>.

Hatton, Caroline. The Night Olympic Team: Fighting to Keep Drugs out of the Games. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills, 2008. Print.

Peterson, Judy Monroe. Steroids, Sports, and Body Image: The Risks of Performance enhancing Drugs. Berkeley Heights, NJ, USA: Enslow, 2004. Print.

"Should Performance Enhancing Drugs (such as Steroids) Be Accepted in Sports?" Sports and Drugs. ProCon.org, n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2013. <http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=1200>.

Cited: Assael, Shaun. Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School : The Secret History of America 's True Drug Addiction. New York, NY: ESPN, 2007. Print. "Athletes and Steroids - SteroidAbuse .com." Athletes and Steroids - SteroidAbuse .com. Association Against Steroid Abuse, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. &lt;http://www.steroidabuse.com/athletes-and-steroids.html&gt;. Hatton, Caroline. The Night Olympic Team: Fighting to Keep Drugs out of the Games. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills, 2008. Print. Peterson, Judy Monroe. Steroids, Sports, and Body Image: The Risks of Performance enhancing Drugs. Berkeley Heights, NJ, USA: Enslow, 2004. Print. "Should Performance Enhancing Drugs (such as Steroids) Be Accepted in Sports?" Sports and Drugs. ProCon.org, n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2013. &lt;http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=1200&gt;.