Steroids In Sports Essay

First, to understand steroid abuse we must educate ourselves on the current legislation of steroid usage in the United States. In the United States we have the United States anti doping agency (USADA) as the governing body that decides what drugs are to be put on the controlled substances list. In Sports the decision is up to the league, but they follow suit with the USADA and several leagues have a more comprehensive list. The World Anti Doping Agency was formed in 2003 before the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. WADA takes the stance that any steroid or steroid dervitave is a banned substance(WADA, 2012). They also follow suit with the USADA. These agencies focus most of their time on major league athletes, and nothing beyond that. Antidoping efforts currently focus
elite competitive sports which concern only a small part of the population. From a student athlete perspective this is a problem because of high prevalence of uncontrolled, medically unsupervised doping practiced in lower level sports. There is no one watching out on lower levels of sports such as collegiate athletes. The NCAA’s view on steroids is that a steroid is testosterone or its synthetic derivatives.
As stated in the 2012 Athlete Substance Handbook. Some examples the NCAA provide are Andro, Boldenone, DHEA, Dianabol (D-bol), Nandrolone and Stanozolol. Also, the NCAA promotes drug education and mandates that each athletic department conduct a drug and alcohol education program once a semester, to increase the athletes' understanding of the drug-testing program and to promote the avoidance of drug us. Despite these regulations, the use of anabolic steroid of athletes has not decreased, and, in some instances, has increased according to the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory study in 1996. In general, the decision to not use drugs is felt to be related more to the fear of being caught than to health issues, and student athletes continue to look for ways to avoid detection rather than decide not to use these banned substances. To avoid detection many athletes are turning to designer steroids, which are steroids that are new and non testable, derivatives of human steroids, one such steroid is tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) as described by 2007 BMC medical ethics article on weaseling around current
legislation.

The current practices in place by the anti-doping agencies need to be revamped. First in the US there needs to be an increase in the budget, for research and development. Advocate to your local governing and federal bodies that you want to see a larger budget for the testing facilities to increase the scope the tests to be able to detect designer steroids. Second would be to advocate in schools the increased education of supplement and steroid abuse. And finally the best way we can advocate for anti doping in college athletes is to require more drug testing, that includes designer steroids and precursors; and make sure the athletes know that there is going to be greater testing. This method of increased testing has been proven according to a UIL study spanning two years in Texas with the introduction if the University Interscholastic League which from 2008-2010 tested over 51,000 student athletes and only had 21 incidents of steroid usage, which is only 0.0004% or 1 in 2,500 rather than the current running US rate of 1 in 33. This will cost the school more in expense but it will keep even the slightest though of abuse out of athletes minds. Today I have gone over the current legislation on steroids the use in collegiate athletes and what actions need to be taken to protect the future athletes. Steroid usage on the college level is not being controlled as it should be. Steps need to be taken to lower the rate of incidence of steroids in the future, because today’s college athletes are tomorrow’s major league athletes.