Question: Should performance-enhancing drugs be accepted in sports?

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) should be permitted in professional sports. Accepted.

Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports Extend the argument.

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) should be permitted in professional sports. I affirm that PEDs should be permitted in sports. Legalizing PEDs would serve to level the playing field. According to the New York Times, more than a third of the top Tour de France finishers since 1998 have been confirmed to be doping while racing, despite efforts to stop them (1). So, the statistics clearly indicate that those who obey the rules and do not dope have a relatively low chance of performing well. If those who did not not use Performance Enhancing Drugs in the Tour de France were instead allowed to dope, those racers would have had the same advantages as those who currently dope illegally, and the playing field would have been more even. One of the primary reasons people enjoy watching professional sports is because they showcase the highest level of human achievement. Allowing PEDs to be used would raise the level of competition and skill in professional sports. This would thus make achievements in sports seem even more unthinkable and impressive, which would thus make more people attend these sporting events. As described in Forbes, "A huge part of watching sports is witnessing the very peak of human athletic ability, and legalizing performance enhancing drugs would help athletes climb even higher (2)." This shows that Performance Enhancing Drugs can raise the level of sports, which can make sports even more of a spectacle. For example, during the 1990's, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa used steroids, their respective games were usually sold out with people who wanted to see their heightened abilities (2). I will now refute my opponent's arguments. My opponent argues that PEDs provide with a large risk for athletes. However, Athletes who are using PEDs are already in a dangerous industry, and frequently become injured regardless of whether or not they use drugs. In the year 2013 alone, the NFL reported at least 152 concussions, and was forced to spend up to 765 million dollars to settle claims of traumatic head injury brought by former players (3). So, PEDs do not provide with a large injury risk compared to the inherent risk of professional sports. My opponent also argues that allowing PEDs takes away from true human achievement. However, being an athlete requires a high amount of skill regardless of whether or not you use PEDs. Hitting a home run, for example requires excellent timing and a perfect swing. Using PEDs may increase the distance of this home run, but hitting a it is still a spectacle of your own human, not chemical precision. So, performing in sports requires intricate skill, no matter what. It is thus clear that PEDs do not take away from human achievement. As such, I affirm. 1- http://www.nytimes.com... 2- http://www.forbes.com... 3- http://www.pbs.org...

Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports I accept

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) should be permitted in professional sports. As am I, thank you for accepting Pro! PEDs should not be permitted for use in professional sports (or sports at any level) for a number of reasons. First and foremost, PEDs present an enormous health risk for athletes that use them. They lead to many severe health problems, including but not limited to heart and circulatory problems, psychiatric disorders and inhibited growth and development (http://www.mayoclinic.org... and http://www.livestrong.com...). The law, in the broader view of things, aims to generally protect people from making poor decisions. If all people are treated as equals under the law, it is the duty of the law to aim to protect athletes just as it aims to protect drug users. It is therefore the responsibility of the law to warn athletes away from taking performance enhancing drugs. In the broader scope of sport, it can be appreciated that teenage athletes who train among adult ones or share the same coaches would also turn to PEDs used by the people around them (were PEDs legalized and accessible), which would not only pose even more serious health concerns but also set trends about drug culture in general, spreading the reach of recreational drug use even further. Sports are enjoyed by people because they are a visual demonstration of what human beings can achieve, individually or collectively. They are designed to amaze and put on a show, and we watch them to celebrate this human achievement. If athletes took PEDs, we would be celebrating chemical achievement, instead. Thus, PEDs could be appreciated to undermine the central philosophy of sport. Finally, a counterargument could be that not all athletes would need to take PEDs and some may choose not to without consequence- however, this is not true. Even if some athletes uphold moral or health standards to not take PEDs, they have their freedom of choice infringed upon: if they want to be successful, they will also have to take drugs. Allowing any athletes to take PEDs means no longer protecting any athletes, even ones that don't want to use dangerous drugs, from these things. This is exemplified in the American Scientific Magazine: "Game theory highlights why it is rational for professional cyclists to dope: the drugs are extremely effective as well as difficult or impossible to detect; the payoffs for success are high; and as more riders use them, a "clean" rider may become so noncompetitive that he or she risks being cut from the team" (http://www.scientificamerican.com...). Two more websites consulted: http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org... http://www.usada.org... Your move! :)

Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports 1. Athletes should be able to use whatever means they would like to improve their performance. If that includes steroids, then let them use it. 2. Steroids' risks are clear, and an athlete has a right to choose whether or not he would like to use them. 3. Steroid testing is not efficient, and new types of steroids are being released that often pass screenings.

Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports Extend.

Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. Said drugs should stay illegal for use in sports, for a few reasons. 1) Negative effect on the steroid user Steroids, as we all know, speed up protein synthesis to enhance performance. However, there are some harmful side effects to using them. They include: - higher blood pressure - higher cholesterol levels - higher risk of heart disease - liver damage - premature growth - testicular cancer - abnormally large amounts of acne - breast development in men This, obviously, is not good for the steroid user. Furthermore, exercising normally can avoid these problems, and regular exercise is better for physical and mental health. 2) Negative impact on children When children start to get into sports, they normally treat their favorite player as an idol, an image of what they want to be when they grow up. How would they feel if their idol essentially cheated by using drugs so they didn't have to work as hard? Furthermore, what if they decided to use steroids too, because their hero did? 3) Unfair advantage Most professional athletes work hard every day to stay in shape and sharp at their sport. Why should some players get to skip this hard work that everyone else is doing? That's all for now.

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) should be permitted in professional sports. To refute my opponent's arguments and his responses to my own, one by one: 1. "Legalizing PEDs would serve to level the playing field. According to the New York Times, more than a third of the top Tour de France finishers since 1998 have been confirmed to be doping while racing" Response: Not only should they not be legalized, there should be more enforcement to keep them out of sports. It's not a strong argument to say "some people are doing it anyway, we might as well make it legal so everyone can". Some people do cocaine! Furthermore, rich athletes from wealthier countries will have access to the latest, highest-quality PEDs while poorer athletes from poorer countries which don't have the same medical or scientific advances will not be able to keep up. As long as PEDs are available (or even legal), the playing field won't ever be level. PEDs are one of the largest factors that make the playing field not be level, because they give a foothold to wealth and country of origin as deciders of athletic performance. 2. "One of the primary reasons people enjoy watching professional sports is because they showcase the highest level of human achievement. Allowing PEDs to be used would raise the level of competition and skill in professional sports." Response: Allowing PEDs would raise the level of competition in an extremely uneven manner, and we would showcase chemical achievement instead of human achievement (as outlined in my first argument). 3. "My opponent argues that PEDs provide with a large risk for athletes. However, Athletes who are using PEDs are already in a dangerous industry, and frequently become injured regardless of whether or not they use drugs." Response: I would call it an invalid argument to say that, because what they do is dangerous already, it doesn't matter that PEDs could make their lives more dangerous. All people are under the law and the law should protect all people. Welders have a more dangerous career than teachers, but it isn't any less against the law for them to use cocaine. 4. "My opponent also argues that allowing PEDs takes away from true human achievement. However, being an athlete requires a high amount of skill regardless of whether or not you use PEDs. [...] Using PEDs may increase the distance of this home run, but hitting a it is still a spectacle of your own human, not chemical precision." Response: I agree that there is a side of sports not affected by PEDs, but I think that this argues my side of the debate more than it does yours- we will celebrate the same skills, changed or unchanged by PEDs, as human achievement. The use of PEDs therefore does not increase this human achievement and should not be celebrated, it only adds chemical achievement to what is already amazing. This is not something we want to celebrate, as it is outside of the central philosophy of sport, and it is certainly not worth the health risks or other disparities (as outlined above) the PEDs would bring to sport at any level.

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) should be permitted in professional sports. Performance Enhancing Drugs are defined as substances used to improve performance in a variety of fields. We're talking about steroids, lean mass builders, stimulants, nootropics, painkillers, sedatives, blood boosters, etc- not caffeine and green beans.

Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports Just go by popular definitions.

WC Debate - RR: Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for use in all major sports leagues As he has not yet explained his case, I hope that he will take the next round to clarify it as I have in the first, but for now, I will focus on providing advantages for my case. The current system for athletes is such that they already put themselves at great physical risk in endeavoring to be the best. Just as a result of training, athletes suffer intensely. High altitude training is a must for many athletes, as it leads to a much higher production of red blood cells and therefore more transport of oxygen through the body, increasing endurance. However, acclimatisation to high altitude leads to the production of too many red blood cells, making the blood thicker and reducing blood flow. This stresses out the heart, and deprives parts of the body of oxygen. High altitudes also lead to intense weight loss (both from loss of appetite and the body eating itself), risks of weakening the body's immune system, and lengthened times of recovery from muscle damage. That's not to mention the expansive list of altitude illnesses that can result from pressure changes and oxygen deprivation. [1] Pro athletes train for 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week, training intensely the entire time. Typical athletes have to maintain incredibly high heart rates for long periods of time, stressing their hearts in the process. [2] This all comes in part from the extremely unhealthy diets that these athletes ingest, as well as excess stress. [3] What are the results of all this? Cardiomyopathy, enlarged hearts, wearing down of heart valves. [5] This leads to a much higher likelihood of early and sudden death. [4] This is played out in football, where the average life expectancy of an NFL player is 58 years. [6] Overtraining can lead to massive systemic issues, such as imbalances in the brain, nervous and hormonal systems, upper respiratory illness, compromised immune function, and chronic inflammation. [3] The basis for this harm actually plays out as a result of free radical production, which causes chain reactions that destroy cells in the body. [4] Athletes push themselves through pain and injury, and are expected to do so in order to achieve glory, thus perpetuating health harms, and spurning treatment and prevention efforts. [3] But the hypocrisy goes beyond training. Athletes are allowed to use any number of dietary supplements, equipment, clothing, and medical treatments to enhance their performance. Vitamin pills are commonly used, megadoses of which have been shown to cause a number of deaths among athletes and significant health harms even at regular doses. [7][8] Many use whole-body Lycra suits, and the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit is thought to be responsible for breaking world records in swimming, increasing the costs required in order to succeed. [9] Steroids will not significantly add to these harms. More than that, it's hypocritical, and the legal structure of any organization should always endeavor to be consistent. If they're going to allow athletes to engage in practices such as I've detailed above (and, in fact, encourage it), then they should allow similarly damaging practices that the players take upon themselves to engage in. These athletes are allowed to put themselves in harm's way in dozens of other ways (not to mention the numerous ways in which they're made vulnerable to physical injury), and I see no reason why this shouldn't apply to use of drugs. Why are these allowed while steroids and hormones remain problematic? It's really just a perceptual thing " steroids are viewed as cheating, whereas all of these are effectively reasonable, despite the health harms associated with them. But the reality is that the current system is the one that encourages cheating, not one in which these are legalized. Why is that? The main reason is that athletes and the organizations behind them have found ways to outwit the system. Athletes pursue alternatives to the usual anabolic steroids and hormones that allow them to fly under the radar. Designer steroids are "manufactured to closely resemble existing known compounds, but with sufficient chemical diversity to ensure that their detection by the WADA accredited laboratories is more difficult. "[10] We manage to find the ones we know exist, but lack detection mechanisms for new designer steroids, detection cannot keep up with the rate of development. Gene doping is a newer system based on gene therapy, which is meant to insert a gene into a given site in the body, where it will then produce large amounts of steroid/hormone endogenously. It's not safe, and it's untested in humans, yet athletes have already begun to pursue it. [11] They may even already have been used at Sochi. [12] There are three major harms to this system 1. It's classist. It allows only those who are capable of affording these expensive alternatives to engage in this type of cheating. Only those who can afford the increased expense can rise to the top, something that legalized, cheap steroids could demonstrably improve upon. 2. It damages the credibility of sporting leagues, who often don't detect these for years and even decades, and of athletes and their organizations, who are forced to hide their usage. They can acquire any number of medals over the years, be idolized and immortalized by their records, and then have to be torn down much later, much to everyone's embarrassment. This also ends up damaging the organizations they're associated with. A great example is Lance Armstrong, who started the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They were forced to change their name to Livestrong, and lost the very helpful endorsement of Nike, thus reducing valuable contributions to an organization aimed at supporting cancer victims. 3. It's more dangerous for athletes. At best, they're getting these from reputable sources, where they've only been lightly tested, and thus they're using the athletes as guinea pigs, causing major harms. [10] Since they are normally less effective than what is detectable,[13] they have to take more, exacerbating the problem. And the reality is that most of them won't come from reputable sources, and any number of dangerous substances may exist alongside their choice doping agent. These athletes are far less likely to pursue the far more dangerous, less effective, and more expensive route to success in the absence of a ban. They will be taking thoroughly tested steroids and hormones, often prescribed by doctors and health officials who can monitor them. Here's another benefit, though it may seem counter-intuitive " steroids provide an opportunity to level the playing field. Individuals produce different levels of testosterone, which can dramatically affect muscle growth. [19] Those with anemia are effectively handicapped by the lack of oxygen shuttling through their bodies. The presence of hormone injections and compounds that control red blood cell production like erythropoietin make it possible for these athletes to keep up. Con, you have the floor. 1. www. altitude. org/altitude_training. php 2. health. india. com/fitness/a-professional-athletes-fitness-regime-an-insiders-guide/ 3. www. philmaffetone. com/files/20158/Athletes-Fit-But-Unhealthy. pdf 4. . http://imbodybuilding.com... 5. . http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com... 6. . http://strengthplanet.com... 7. . http://whatstheharm.net... 8. . http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org... 9. . http://www.economist.com... 10. . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 11. . http://www.bbc.com... 12. . http://www.businessinsider.com... 13. . http://www.steroid.com... 14. . http://www.livescience.com...

Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. Unfortunately, I have to say that your arguments apply to a few related resolutions, but not the resolution at hand. Your "Part one arguments," to the extent they raise true symptoms (which is not clear, because data on the symptoms of the usage of steroids at recommended dosages in healthy people is in a shortage and rather conflicting, which is perhaps why you have cited no scientific data), apply to the resolution "Should you use steroids?" Or "Is hiring a steroid-using baseball player a good investment?" Your part two arguments apply to "Should children be encouraged to look into athletes as role models?" (and I note they also have a flaw, how would the child feel about his uber-clean athlete role model if he found out the athlete was only being uber-clean because he was forced to? Kind of disillusioning no?) Your part three argument applies to "Should sports leagues concerned with an image of 'hard work' or 'fairness' allow steroid users to play?" The resolution at hand, however, is whether it should be ILLEGAL for professional athletes to use these drugs. That is, whether Johnny McSuperStrong's use of steroids is a justification to send a man with a gun to his door and stick him in a cage, shooting him if he doesn't cooperate. This raises questions of "What are proper social limits (rights)?" Since human beings require the application of their own mind to their own actions to live, and need to produce goods with those actions, and this is a universal need, it holds that each human who wishes to live should find it proper that others not interfere with this (the rights of liberty and property). In order to pursue this, it is of course necessary that they themselves not interfere first, for interfering with one who does not interfere removes the incentive for that other to not interfere. Thus the question in whether to violate someone's liberty or property is "Have they violated yours?" I await your proof that the injection of steroids into one's own body, or between consenting parties, somehow violates anyone's liberty or property.

Performance Enhancement Drugs in Professional Sports Hello, and thanks for opening this discussion. I will be countering these specific claims made by my opponent: 1. Use of PED's destroys the spirit of competition and love of the game. 2. Hard work and determination are all that is needed to make athletes "elite." 3. PED's are too dangerous to be used. I wish to make it clear that I do not advocate the unrestricted use of all PED's. I will instead make the case that PED's are not significantly different than other performance enhancing measures, and that the controlled allowance of PED's will make sports both safer and more competitive. 1. Use of PED's destroys the spirit of competition and love of the game - Quite the contrary, PED's increase the spirit of competition. Nature has it's own performance enhancing drug called "genetics." Genes are attained by pure luck, and it is undeniable that some genes bestow natural advantages for some sports. For example, superior eyesight is proven to be a natural advantage in baseball. Slender legs are proven advantages in distance running. Long torsos are a natural advantage in swimming. The list goes on and on [1]. If no performance enhancement was ever allowed, elite sports would only be accessible to a few genetically lucky people. As a result, performance enhancement allows more people to pursue their love for the game who may not have naturally bestowed advantages. For example, the pro baseball player Tommy John was bestowed by nature with an inferior tendon in his arm. In 1974, he underwent surgery to replace his tendon and went on to win, on average, 20 more games per season than he did before he surgery [2]. Since eyesight is so advantageous in baseball, many baseball players routinely get laser eye surgery to artificially enhance their sight [3]. This could definitely be considered artificial performance enhancement, which may be considered unfair. Yet without access to such measures athletes would be subject to a different kind of unfairness - the genetic lottery. In many ways, performance enhancement allows the genetic playing field to be more level. Sports would actually be LESS competitive if the genes bestowed by nature were the only PED's allowed, because less people would be able to compete. If certain PED's were available to everyone, then people with less advantageous natural traits could overcome them and there would be more competitors. 2. Hard work and determination are all that is needed to make athletes "elite." - This ties into the last point. Hard work can definitely make you better, and it is important. But when genetics come into play, no amount of hard work can overcome natural gifts. Consider the example of Stefan Holm, a world-class Scandinavian high jumper. Stefan was the epitome of an all-natural athlete forged through hard work. He began practicing high-jump in his back yard at the age of 6. As he got older, he followed a very strict diet and weight lifting routine to strengthen his legs. He was obsessed as a teenager and practiced for hours each day, taking thousands and thousands of practice jumps. After years of practice, he won gold in the 2004 Olympics. Two years later, a college student named Donald Thomas was dared by a friend to take a high jump at a track practice. In the first jump of his life, with no training, he cleared 6'6". Two days later, in flat high-top shoes and basketball shorts, he cleared 7' and broke the university record. 8 months later, with only mild amounts of practice, he went against Holm at the world championships and defeated the man who had been training obsessively all his life. Donald Thomas was born with an abnormally long Achilles Tendon which allowed him to jump extraordinarily high with little effort [4]. Clearly, hard work and determination was not enough to give Holm an edge over such a genetically lucky individual. Once again, with equal access to PEDs, all athletes would truly be able to reap the rewards of hard work while avoiding the futility of genetic disadvantage. 3. PEDs are too dangerous - no doubt some are, and they should be banned. But some are not. They are no more dangerous than other performance enhancing measures such as eye surgery, tendon replacement, or self-imposed anorexia (wrestlers). What is more dangerous is the current system, where PEDs are illegal but still widely used. In the current system, those who play by the rules are indirectly punished and outmatched by those who do not and avoid getting caught. This creates a "cat and mouse" game atmosphere where athletes do not stop using PEDs, they merely devise new ways to avoid detection. It also blurs the line between what is truly a PED and what is not. Athletes are people who naturally want to push limits, and it creates a more dangerous climate where they try to experiment with PEDs that are potent enough to be questionable yet barely legal enough to be legit. Banning all PEDs is hardly the best solution to the problem of sportsmanship and fairness. [1] All examples taken from David Epstein's book "The Sports Gene." [2] http://gladwell.com... [3] Ibid. [4] David Epstein, "The Sports Gene"

WC Debate - RR: Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for use in all major sports leagues I would like to address the debate, however my opponent ask me to clarify the side I will support and it's quite simply the literal opposite of yours. My side is apparent simply based on the title of the debate and our positions, I will be arguing that performance enhancing drugs shouldn't be legal in every major sporting league. Also it seems you have taken care of the basic definition needed to begin the debate and I see no need for additional definitions atleast while the debate is still somewhat simple. Onto my argument 1. Equality As these drugs became allowed in sporting leagues, they would increase player production meaning in order to compete you would have to take drugs in order to win. One great example of this would be in cycling many cyclists's resorted to doping to boost their production in order to win the tour de france. So in order to stay equal to the competition Lance Armstrong took drugs alongside them, all may appear equal but in truth the drugs are expensive and discriminate on players on the league who are too poor to acquire the quantity needed to stay on par with opponents. [1] 2. Health Concerns Their are many bad health effects of anabolic steroids such as[2]: 1. Changes in liver function 2. Infertility 3. Growth of male breasts 4. Retardation in fetus's 5. Death 6. Increased aggressiveness 7. Sleeping disorders 8. Confusion 9. Paranoia 10. Hallucinations 11. A weaker immune system 12. Hair loss 3. The league's rights The league has the right to determine how the sport is played, for example in the NBA only 5 players may on the court at a time. The league itself should be able to determine drug limitations, as the league determines the game rules. [3] Sources: [1] http://www.cyclingnews.com... [2] http://www.sportsci.org... [3] http://www.nba.com...

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) should be permitted in professional sports. I will use this speech to further strengthen my constructive, and refute my opponents refutations. My opponent argues that it does not make sense to legal PEDs with the intention of leveling the playing field. However, I have provided evidence that says that a majority of athletes in some sports use PEDs. Because of this, it is incredibly difficult to eradicate PEDs. This has been seen recently in sports such as baseball. Despite continuous effort by Major League Baseball to take PEDs away from the game, PED use is still widely present. This shows that it would simply be less cumbersome to allow everyone to use PEDs than to attempt to remove them entirely. My opponent also observes that PEDs increase chemical achievement instead of human achievement. However, I have shown that professional athletes still are incredibly skilled, regardless of whether or not they use PEDs. Furthermore, I have shown that people do in fact celebrate "chemical" achievement. An example of this would be the MLB Home Run races in the 1990's, when a majority of the contenders used PEDs. During this point in MLB history, there were more fans and spectators than ever before, which shows celebration of what my opponent dubs "chemical achievement." So, it is clear that PEDs do not eliminate human achievement, and any chemical achievement that they provide is still celebrated. My opponent refutes my argument regarding the inherent dangers of sports by comparing it to teachers and welders who use cocaine. This argument cannot be weighed in this debate for two reasons. First, Professional Athletes are paid much more than welders or teachers. Second, PEDs are much less dangerous than using cocaine. Professional Athletes are being paid much more than teachers or welders, and they are also submitting themselves to the inherent danger of their sports. And I would observe that this argument was mainly put into my constructive speech to show that the dangers of PEDs do not come close to outweighing the inherent dangers of sports. Because of this, the contention regarding the dangers of PEDs cannot be weighed highly. My opponent finally argues that chemical achievement will never be celebrated, as all that people celebrate is human achievement. I do accept that people embrace human achievement in sports, as I even said that in my constructive speech. However, I have also shown that chemical achievement can be celebrated, which increases the appeal to watch professional sports. So, it is clear that PEDs do in fact level the playing field, make sports more appealing, and should in fact be legalized in professional sports. So, I affirm the resolution that Performance Enhancing Drugs should be permitted in professional sports, and I urge a pro ballot.

Permitting the use of performace enhancers would have a coercive effect on athletes who would otherwise avoid drug use Once some people choose to use drugs to enhance their performance, other athletes have their freedom of choice infringed upon: if they want to succeed they have to take drugs too. Athletes are very driven individuals, who would go to great lengths to achieve their goals. The chance of a gold medal in two years’ time may out-weigh the risks of serious health problems for the rest of their life. We should protect athletes from themselves and not allow anyone to take performance-enhancing drugs. An example of the pressure is cycling. The American Scientific magazine explains: “Game theory highlights why it is rational for professional cyclists to dope: the drugs are extremely effective as well as difficult or impossible to detect; the payoffs for success are high; and as more riders use them, a “clean” rider may become so noncompetitive that he or she risks being cut from the team.” (1)   Michael Shermer, The Dopping Dillema, 03/31/2008, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-doping-dilemma accessed 05/15/2011

THW allow performance enhancing drugs in sport Thanks to my opponent for a fun challenge! Good luck! :)

Performance Enhancement Drugs in Professional Sports Performance Enhancements are Putting Athletes in Danger Athletes are cheating more and more now by taking performance enhancements for their professional sport. An athletes health could be at risk while taking performance enhancement drugs, we already have the great technology to support them, plus the athletes are playing their sport for the determination it takes, and the love of the game. Therefore, Performance Enhancement Drugs (PED) in professional sports should remain illegal for the players to keep them safe. Athletes already have great technology to help them with their performance while playing their sport. Athletes will use scientific diets, and oxygen tents as a healthier way of helping them improve. Sports have the technology to push the athletes bodies to extents. "Athletes already use technology to push their bodies to the edge of human capability. Scientific diets, oxygen tents that stimulate high altitudes and supplements that fine-tune already genetically superior bodies are all simple-- and legal"examples." (Duncan). None of those examples are illegal to use for the athlete to help improve their performance. On the other hand, when using PEDs for the extra technology it will help them become better, faster, stronger, then it will make the sport more interesting for both the players and the crowd. "Scientists and engineers have recently developed devices that bump up cognitive performance by dousing the brain in low levels of electricity and using magnetic fields to stimulate the brains nerve cells." (Duncan). This is saying that now because of the help of scientists and engineers athletes can use certain devices to encourage the brain to keep going. Instead of risking their health, they have other ways to improve their performance. PEDs could cause multiple health problems that could be very dangerous. The website of the World Anti-Doping Agency gives warnings on what steroids could do to the athletes ad their body. "The website of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for example, warns that steroids increase the odds of mood shifts, reduced sperm counts, damage to the heart, and masculinization in women." (Duncan). There are many different problems that could occur while taking PEDs, they only list a small amount of possible health risks. If a player were to have one of these problems, then they could be taken out of the sport because of the damage to the body. Yet, athletes could want to use these in order to get stronger to help prevent any injury that could happen while playing. Some athletes are willing to take the chance to help with making the sport safer for the player. The purpose of having the sport is for competition. When an athlete uses PEDs, that purpose is no longer there and with competition the love of the game remains. "Any thoughtful person who plays a sport understands the connection among talent, dedication, and excellence. Every sport sets limits." (Murray). While the athlete is playing the sport each time he/she plays the love of the game should grow. The determination and competition will still be there, but when taking PEDs the athlete forgets about why they are playing in the first place. But, when the athlete uses PEDs it does make them become stronger and better at their sport making it a little bit easier on them, the athlete will then be able to play longer and practice longer because of their strength. To have athletes remain safe, PEDs should remain illegal. Athletes have amazing technology to help them improve in their sport, and there are many different health problems that can occur. Lastly, athletes are playing for the love and competition of the game. Hard work and determination will get the athlete farther than risking the athletes career with taking PEDs.

Performance Enhancing Drugs Would be Legalize in World Sport Tournament A ban is not the way to deal with addiction and health issues. Addiction is a personal situation that must be handled properly, meaning between the user, his doctor, and those affected by his behavior. The drugs being unnatural does not prove that they should be banned. If a certain activity should be banned for giving an artificial advantage, then shouldn't athletes logically be banned from eating healthy diets and exercising more efficiently? Because after all, these are unnatural processes.

Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. "Your "Part one arguments," to the extent they raise true symptoms (which is not clear, because data on the symptoms of the usage of steroids at recommended dosages in healthy people is in a shortage and rather conflicting, which is perhaps why you have cited no scientific data), apply to the resolution "Should you use steroids? " Or "Is hiring a steroid-using baseball player a good investment? "" . http://en.wikipedia.org... They do apply to the resolution, "Performance-enhancing drugs should [not] be allowed in professional sports". They show that using these drugs is unsafe. "Your part two arguments apply to "Should children be encouraged to look into athletes as role models? " No, I'm saying that performance-enhancing drugs should not be allowed because they set a bad example for children. "Your part three argument applies to "Should sports leagues concerned with an image of 'hard work' or 'fairness' allow steroid users to play? " No, I'm saying that performance-enhancing drugs cheat users out of hard work and practice that other players have to go through. "The resolution at hand, however, is whether it should be ILLEGAL for professional athletes to use these drugs. " Uh, no, it's whether "Performance-enhancing drugs should be ALLOWED in professional sports. " "Allowed" and "legal" are very different. "Allowed" means allowed within the sport's rules; "legal" means allowed within the law.

Controlling, rather than ignoring, performance enhancing substances will improve competitive standards in sport Rich athletes from wealthier countries will always have access to the latest, highest quality performance enhancers. On the other side, athletes from poorer countries which do not have the same medical and scientific advances will not be able to keep up. They will always be at a disadvantage regardless of whether performance enhancing drugs are legal or not.

Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. "Doing unsafe things is allowable. People have the right to do unsafe things with their own bodies. " Did you not see what "allowed" refers to? Rights or not, steroids are not allowed in professional sports. "Athletes are not slaves, existing for the sake of their examples to children. They exist for their own sake and are to be treated as such, as human beings, so long as they treat others as such. This means they are not to be forced to a course of action just because it will benefit someone else, only them initiating force can justify such force. " I didn't say that. Obviously, an athlete should be expected to be a role model for children, since many kids will look up to him/her. This does not dictate the way they live; it simply means they should not do stupid things, cheat, etc. because that will negatively influence kids. This is why, for example, Michael Phelps got a lot of crap for doing drugs. ""Have to? " No one "has to" do such a thing. They are perfectly able to take the drugs themselves, or work hard, or not condition themselves, as they please. " Do you see any unconditioned professional athletes? They all have to do some sort of tough conditioning to stay sharp at their sport. And most people consider steroids cheating, or do not use them because of the aforementioned side effects. Professional athletes who do not use steroids HAVE TO work hard to stay in shape and up to expectations. "And the use of drugs by one party does not delete the hard work by another, they are separate bodies, separate phenomena. " EXACTLY - one party still has to go through hard work, while the other can just take drugs. "This would be a permissible arguments if your round 1 argument did not already concede you were talking about what THE LAW should allow. As it stands it is not, it is merely a tool of deception, and I quote . . . That was at the beginning of your first round argument. That leaves no room for weaseling out of it, the resolution was explicitly clarified by you as meaning allowable by the law, not allowable by the sports league. " Well, first, if something is illegal for use in sports, then it is not allowed for use in sports. So I can relate these arguments to the resolution even if you were right. Second, you just contradicted yourself. First you state that I conceded that I was talking about what the law should allow. But then, you say I "explicitly clarified [it] as being allowable by the law, not allowable by the sports league". But really, I was laying the latter all along. The very first sentence says "illegal for use in sports". That means that their use is punishable by law if used in sports. Now before you start saying that we should not jail people for steroid use, that's not what "punishable by law" means. Loitering is punishable by law; do you get thrown in jail for it? What about littering or violating curfew laws? =============================================================================== My opponent has spent all of his arguments attempting to not relate my arguments to the resolution. However, I have showed how he has misinterpreted all of my arguments. Furthermore, he has not attempted to argue with my position, and is giving contradictory and misleading "reasons" on why I have "not" supported the resolution.

Freedom of choice. If athletes wish to take drugs in search of improved performances, let them do s... Once some people choose to use drugs to enhance their performance, other athletes have their freedom of choice infringed upon: if they want to succeed they have to take drugs too. Athletes are very driven individuals, who would go to great lengths to achieve their goals. The chance of a gold medal in two years time may out-weigh the risks of serious health problems for the rest of their life. We should protect athletes from themselves and not allow anyone to take performance-enhancing drugs.

Performance Enhancing Drugs Would be Legalize in World Sport Tournament But, in this case, we talk about the athlete whose have so many fans. For example, the football player, they have so many fans all around the world, from those who already old, mid-age, or even the children. If the using of PED is allowed in this case, of course what the athlete did is being adapted by their fans. For example, Child "A" said "Oh, my idol use that drugs to improve the energy during the match, I will try it too" Isn't it will be dangerous for the children under age? And for your information, eating healthy diets and exercising more efficiently = Is natural ways :-)

Controlling, rather than ignoring, performance enhancing substances will improve competitive standards in sport The use of performance enhancing drugs is based on advances in science. When new drugs and therapies are found, athletes turn to them and as a result are much of the time ahead of the anti-doping organizations, which need to develop methods of athlete testing whenever a new drug that is meant to be untraceable is created. In 2008 it was a big shock when Riccardo Ricco (a cyclist) was caught using the performance-enhancing drug Mircera, which had been considered undetectable for a number of years. The fact is that a ban of performance enhancing drugs enables mainly athletes from wealthy countries and teams that can afford the newest technology to go undetected, whilst others are disadvantaged (1). So because it gives an unfair advantage to the wealthy one who can pay for the undetectable drugs, we should legalize it.   Millard Baker, Riccardo Ricco Tests Positive for Undetectable New Drug Mircera at 2008 Tour de France, 07/18/2008, http://steroidreport.com/2008/07/18/riccardo-ricco-and-mircera-pegylated-epo/, accessed 05/20/2011

There is no distinction between "natural" and synthetic methods of performance enhancement The natural/unnatural distinction is untenable. Already athletes use all sorts of dietary supplements, exercises, equipment, clothing, training regimes, medical treatments, etc. to enhance their performance. There is nothing ‘natural’ about taking vitamin pills, wearing whole-body Lycra suits, having surgery on ligaments, spending every day in a gym pumping weights or running in shoes with spikes on the bottom. Diet, medicine, technology, and even just coaching already give an artificial advantage to those athletes who can afford the best of all these aids. Since there is no clear way to distinguish from legitimate and illegitimate artificial aids to performance, they should all be allowed. So taking these drugs is no more unnatural than what happens today.   A practical example of an unnatural aid is the Speedo worn in 2008 at the Beijing Olympics. FINA, the world governing body of swimming was concerned about the extraordinary statistics in Beijing where swimmers wearing the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit won 90 per cent of all available medals and broke 23 world records. Since Speedo launched the suit in 2008, 108 world records have fallen (until February 2009) (1).   Simon Hart, Swimwear giant Speedo hit back at 'unfair advantage' claims, 02/19/2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/swimming/4699498/Swimwear-giant-Speedo-hit-back-at-unfair-advantage-claims.html,accessed 15/05/2011

Steroids Should Be Legal in Professional Sports I contend that professional sports leagues should legalize steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. I understand that this position may initially be considered blasphemy, but there are multiple reasons that leagues should legalize performance-enhancing drugs. First of all, throughout history, humans have been trying to stretch the limits of what is possible. This includes through the use of any available technology. The fact that humans cannot physically fly did not stop the Wright Brothers from building the first airplane. Yes, legalized use of steroids would create frequent changes in the record books, but those are all part of human achievement. Furthermore, comparisons between eras are already moot, considering the differences between the rules of today and those of 50 or 100 years ago. Also, it benefits the sports economically to allow performance-enhancing drugs. In 1999, when Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire both broke Roger Maris's single-season home run record, interest in baseball soared. Many casual fans found their accomplishments fascinating, as those men were going to a place no human had been before. A comparable analogy would be when the oldest person ever, Jeanne Calment of France, died at the age of 122 years. She would never have been able to live that long with primitive technology, but people were fascinated by her shattering the record (no other human has even lived to 120). Why should a different standard be applied to sports? Baseball was always the sport most impacted by performance-enhancing drugs. Thus, it saw the biggest excitement around new records. Today, players normally are caught and suspended when they take other performance-enhancing drugs. Thus, there is less opportunity to have the excitement of breaking records. Consequently, baseball's ratings have slipped in a time where football and basketball are basking in rising ratings relative to the average TV show. Thus, steroids should be legal in sports.

Drugs will undermine the central philosophy of sport Sport is also about the spectacle for spectators. Sport has become a branch of the entertainment business and the public demands “higher, faster, stronger” from athletes. If drug-use allows world records to be continually broken, and makes American Football players bigger and more exciting to watch, why deny the public what they want, especially if the athletes want to give it to them? The criterion that athletes should only be applying their ‘natural abilities’ runs into trouble. The highly advanced training technologies, health programs, sports drinks, use of such things as caffeine pills, and other energy boosters seem to defeat the notion that athletes are currently applying only their 'natural abilities'. Performance enhancing drugs would not go too far beyond the current circumstances for athletes.

Performance Enhancing Drugs Would be Legalize in World Sport Tournament Performance-enhancing drugs (PED) are substances used by athletes to improve their performances. These drugs are addictive and if we use it for a long time it will be affect our heart-health. And these regulation will not appropriate with the purpose of sport which is Be Healthy By Natural Ways. Because if the athlete use these PED it will insist them to do more than the energy they have. And of course it is not healthy.

Levels the playing field. Currently suspicion over drug use surrounds every sport and every success... Very bad for athletes. The use of performance-enhancing drugs leads to serious health problems, including “steroid rage”, the development of male characteristics in female athletes, heart attacks, and greatly reduced life expectancy. Some drugs are also addictive.

Professional athletes using Performance-Enhancing drugs In todays world the temptation to use performance-enhancing drugs is too great for too many athletes. Performance-enhancing drugs are self explanatory, it is a drug to enhance physical performance. Usually associated with professional athletes striving for perfection. There are many risks that come with taking performance-enhancements there are many types of PEDs, all of which are illegal. The United States Anti-Doping agency should keep performance-enhancing drugs illegal to keep professional athletes safe. Breaking the law is not worth the risk. when a professional athlete uses performance-enhancing drugs, they have got a lot to lose. The wrong choice almost brought an end to many athletes careers. One tragic example is Lance Armstrong, stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. Jim Thorpe was denied two gold medals in the olympics, The list is endless. Athletes do not only lose their awards but it destroys their reputation that they have built. Life for professional sports organizations focused on managing the anti-doping policies would be easier. That might be true, but the people who manage the organization would no longer have a job there. Legalizing PEDs would not only negatively affect the athletes, but the people around them. There is an overwhelming amount of negative side effects that can occur from using performance-enhancing drugs. "Simply put PEDs have the ability or potential to drastically alter the human body, and biological functions, including the ability to considerably improve athletic performance" These drugs, however, can be extremely dangerous and in certain situations, deadly" (USADA). Other negative side effects include muscle weakness, hallucinations, liver abnormalities and tumors, etc. Yet, with all those factors in play, many still choose to go down that dangerous road. Professional athletes are already risking a lot when playing the sport, so why does it matter if they use performance enhancements? If athletes are already taking so many risks, then they should absolutely try to keep themselves as safe as possible. The danger of using PEDs outweigh the gains in muscle mass or strength. When an athlete uses PEDs, it defeats the purpose of the competition altogether. "Success in sports takes talent...using steroids is a form of cheating and interferes with fair competition"(littleleague). There are other ways to improve performance; train safely, eat healthy, and get plenty of rest. To be a truly great athlete you have to work hard. There is no shortcut to success. "Steroids and doping will help pitchers to throw harder, home runs go further, cyclists to charge longer and sprinters to test the very limits of human speed(Smith).In the moment that might be exhilarating, but it can cause a whole lot of problems later in life. using performance-enhancing drugs is not worth the risk at all. To keep athletes safe, performance-enhancing drugs should stay illegal.The bottom line is professional athletes have too much to lose, the risk is too great, and it is cheating the game."Life is full of grays, but sports are black and white. There is always a clear winner in the end and everyone expects that the winner achieved the success in a fair and ethical way"(little league).It is important to understand the facts about Performance-enhancing drugs. Works Cited "Fitness." Performance-enhancing Drugs: Know the Risks. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. "Why Steroids Are Bad for Major League Baseball." Why Steroids Are Bad for Major League Baseball. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. "Effects of Performance Enhancing Drugs | U.S. Anti-Doping Agency USADA." US Anti Doping Agency USADA. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. .

Permitting the use of performace enhancers would have a coercive effect on athletes who would otherwise avoid drug use There is no such thing as a forced decision. Everyone has complete control over their own body and their own decisions. Everyone has an absolute right to possession of one’s own body. If you own your body then you can choose what to do with it, and any exchange, such as money to an employer in exchange for use of your body (labour) is justified, because it was a voluntary exchange and you still possess yourself.  If you choose to take drugs, you have not been forced into it no matter the peer pressure you may be under or that other having taken the drugs may make you uncompetitive.

Legalize Performance-Enhancing Drug for Sportman wait, sir. you're not consistent with your position. Disadvantages : - Performance enhancing Drugs could have an impact on the body if left or the sportsman quits sport. - Any sport is expected to be fair and based on your natural talent and training. - There are athletes that can"t consume performance enhancing drugs. This makes their chance of winning, bleak. - A sport is usually considered as a passion. The essence of the sport is lost if performance enhancing drugs are legalizes - Be legalizing such performance enhancing drugs, athletes could be motivated and get addicted to other forms of drugs. - The athletes can take it for granted that these drugs will enhance their performance and thus, the hard work that could be put otherwise can be hampered. and it can kill the sportman who consume it. For example, some German athletes who took anabolic steroids in the 1970"s and 1980"s are having health problems now. A famous NFL player, Lyle Alzado, died at the age of 43 after having taking steroids for more than 2 decades. And the sciensist's research : "Performance enhancers, like steroids and other forms of doping, have a negative effect on long-term health. For then users of these enhancers are hurting themselves in the long run without on the average improving their short-term rewards from athletic competition, as long as competitors also use harmful enhancers. This is the main rationale for trying to ban steroids and other forms of doping from athletic competitions." Gary Becker, PhD Professor in the Departments of Economics, Sociology, and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago "Doping in Sports," Becker-Posner blog Aug. 27, 2006 THINK MORE !

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports Controlling, rather than ignoring, performance enhancing substances will improve competitive standards in sport

Legalize Performance-Enhancing Drug for Sportman PEDs should remain illegal. The idea of a performance enhancing drug is to improve immediate ability. This gives and unfair handicap to the players of that particular sport that are not using a drug. This in turn cheats the capitalist system by placing someone who is unfit to be at the top at the top.

Natural/unnatural distinction untenable. Already athletes use all sorts of dietary supplements, exe... Natural/unnatural distinction untenable. Already athletes use all sorts of dietary supplements, exercises, equipment, clothing, training regimes, medical treatments, etc. to enhance their performance. There is nothing ‘natural’ about taking vitamin pills, wearing whole-body Lycra suits, having surgery on ligaments, spending every day in a gym pumping weights, running in shoes with spikes on the bottom, etc. Diet, medicine, technology, and even just coaching already give an artificial advantage to those athletes who can afford the best of all these aids. Since there is no clear way to distinguish from legitimate and illegitimate artificial aids to performance, they should all be allowed.

WC Debate - RR: Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for use in all major sports leagues !

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports Drugs will undermine the central philosophy of sport

Protecting the health of athletes Sport is dangerous. Today’s athletes decide to endanger their lives by participating in sports all the time. They decide to participate in sports with the informed decision that they might get hurt as it is part of the sport. Performance enhancing drugs are no different. In the USA every year there are nearly 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Athletes involved in sports such as football, hockey and boxing are at significant risk of TBI due to the high level of contact inherent in these sports. Head injuries are also extremely common in sports such as cycling, baseball, basketball and skateboarding. Many head injuries acquired, playing these sports, lead to permanent brain damage or worse. Yet we do not impose a law to ban athletes from participating in those sports. We trust their assessment of risk (1).   All about Traumatic Brain Injuries: http://www.allabouttbi.com/sports-related-traumatic-brain-injury/, accessed 05/15/2011

Professional athletes using Performance-Enhancing drugs What is sport, but entertainment? And what is entertainment, without pain? We don't care when football players experience debilitating injuries as early as high school, and even worse, long-lasting injuries at the professional level. An estimated one in three NFL players experience brain trauma of some sort, with life-long effects [1]. We don't care. We still watch football. From that, it can be concluded that the negative health effects of PEDs are irrelevant to the discussion of whether professional athletes should use them. It could even be argued that these negative side effects are preferable if it prevents brain trauma or other terrible injuries from the dangers of a sport itself. And so now, the only points of contention are the facts that it is unfair to athletes that do not use them, and that it is illegal. The first point may be justified easily enough. Sport is already an unfair sport. While you may practice thousands and thousands of hours, a person who's practiced half that but has a natural biological advantage can still win. Thus, it can be argued that PEDs can be used to actually level the playing field, between those who do not have as much of a natural biological advantage and those that do. It is a good point that the risk of losing their entire career may not be worth the above advantages. However, it is the choice of the athletes to take that risk, and not for us to judge them. As well, if enough athletes begin to use PEDs, it will eventually become legal nevertheless, or else the sport industry will die down. [1] http://www.nytimes.com...

Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports 1. Athletes should NOT be able to take whatever they want, it's not fair, Athletes should do there best by doing it naturally. there are some things in steroids that can make people sick. 2. Steroids do have a psychological effects on a person, its been proven by tests and any health website weather major or minor would tell you the same. "roid rage" has been proven to be true. 3. liver damage kidney damage increased blood pressure and cholesterol (risk for heart disease) headache and stomach ache severe facial and body acne decreased joint flexibility 4.breast enlargement shrunken testicles lowered sperm count increased sex drive decreased sexual performance - difficulty getting and maintaining erections these effects of steroids are true and could be permanent to the user.

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports Athletes should be free to take risks when training and competing

Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. " They do apply to the resolution, "Performance-enhancing drugs should [not] be allowed in professional sports". They show that using these drugs is unsafe." Doing unsafe things is allowable. People have the right to do unsafe things with their own bodies. " No, I'm saying that performance-enhancing drugs should not be allowed because they set a bad example for children. " Athletes are not slaves, existing for the sake of their examples to children. They exist for their own sake and are to be treated as such, as human beings, so long as they treat others as such. This means they are not to be forced to a course of action just because it will benefit someone else, only them initiating force can justify such force. " No, I'm saying that performance-enhancing drugs cheat users out of hard work and practice that other players have to go through. " "Have to?" No one "has to" do such a thing. They are perfectly able to take the drugs themselves, or work hard, or not condition themselves, as they please. And the use of drugs by one party does not delete the hard work by another, they are separate bodies, separate phenomena. " Uh, no, it's whether "Performance-enhancing drugs should be ALLOWED in professional sports." "Allowed" and "legal" are very different. "Allowed" means allowed within the sport's rules; "legal" means allowed within the law." This would be a permissible arguments if your round 1 argument did not already concede you were talking about what THE LAW should allow. As it stands it is not, it is merely a tool of deception, and I quote (emphasis mine:) " Said drugs should stay ILLEGAL for use in sports, for a few reasons." That was at the beginning of your first round argument. That leaves no room for weaseling out of it, the resolution was explicitly clarified by you as meaning allowable by the law, not allowable by the sports league. You made your bed now argue in it. "and not actually presented an argument, you vote CON at this point." Read second paragraph from the bottom of my Round 1. I did in fact present an argument, as relates to the resolution as you clarified it's meaning at the beginning of the debate. If you are going to state the resolution is anything other than what I have stated it is, you will be forced to admit the statement at the beginning of your Round One argument was deliberately dishonest.

Doping should be allowed I will accept your challenge, and I will argue on the pro side: doping should be allowed in sports. While it may be unfair currently, where athletes are strictly forbidden to athletes and only those who are willing to win by cheating will dope, if the practice is open for everyone, it will create a fair, level playing field since every athlete will have the ability to use the substances. Sporting events are spectator events, meant to showcase the most athletic individuals in the world for the entertainment of the viewers. If there is a substance that is able to enhance the performance of an individual and therefore make the spectacle more impressive, and the athlete consents to using it after being educated on any possible ill side effects, then they should absolutely be allowed.

Performance Enhancement Drugs in Professional Sports x

Performance Enhancement Drugs in Professional Sports x

Protecting young and vulnerable athletes Even if performance-enhancing drugs were only legalized for adults, the definition of this varies from country to country, something which would be problematic for sports that are global. Teenage athletes train alongside adult ones and share the same coaches, so many would succumb to the temptation and pressures to use drugs, if these were widely available and effectively endorsed by legalization. Not only are such young athletes unable to make a fully rational, informed choice about drug-taking, the health impacts upon growing bodies would be even worse than for adult users. It would also send a positive message about drug culture in general, making the use of “recreational drugs” with all their accompanying evils more widespread.

steriods in sports i think sterids should be ban from all sports. its very unhealthy for the body. Those who oppose the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs say that the athletes who use them are breaking the rules and getting an unfair advantage over others. Opponents of the drugs say the athletes are endangering not only their own health, but also indirectly encouraging youngsters to do the same.

Performance Enhancing Drugs Would be Legalize in World Sport Tournament oh

Legalize Performance-Enhancing Drug for Sportman Oh, than simply, sir, LOL. I disagree with what I accepted to, but it is their own damn fault for using performance enhancing drugs, if they know the effects, both long and short term, than I guess it should be legal because they are stupid, the end.

That doping should be permitted in all sports Doping: administering drugs to an athlete in order to enhance sporting performance.If doping were to be permitted (I will refer to it as legal), this would mean unrestricted use. The drugs would not be allowed to be regulated, the use would be unrestricted. Since the topic is normative (“should”), the BoP is shared. My case for why doping should not be permitted in all sports is as follows. HealthIt is truism that doping enhances sporting performance. Already, 14-39% of athletes dope [1]. If it is legalized, this number will undoubtedly increase. The sports industry is extremely competitive, athletes are pushed and constantly pressured to go out there and perform, if they fail in that aspect, they are benched, or worse, dropped from the team. Also, if doping were made legal, then those who dope will have an advantage over those who don’t, and thus those who don’t will have to dope in order to stay in the athletic industry. From this we can conclude that in order to keep their jobs, and their fame, athletes are going to take all opportunities to increase their performance. Thus, if doping were to be legalized, there would be a very large increase in the amount of athletes that dope. The most popular doping drug is anabolic steroids. If doping was to be made legal, the usage of steroids would have a tremendous increase. This is bad, as steroids are very dangerous. The use of steroids can lead to baldness, infertility, impotence, prostate gland enlargement, severe acne, increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture, liver abnormalities and tumors, increased low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol), decreased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol), high blood pressure (hypertension), heart and circulatory problems, aggressive behaviors, rage or violence, psychiatric disorders, such as, drug dependence, infections or diseases such as HIV or hepatitis, inhibited growth and development, and risk of future health problems in teenagers [2]. Use of steroids can also cause severe depression, which leads to suicides [3]. This is devastating for the families of the victims, and anyone around them. “Brenda Marrero came upon her son Efrain surfing the Internet one day last October. When Efrain hid what was on the screen, she asked what he had been looking at. He turned and said he wanted to tell her something: He was using steroids.She called her husband, Frank, and they told Efrain he needed to stop, because steroids are dangerous."But Barry Bonds does it," his parents remember Efrain saying."That doesn't make it right," his father responded.To please his parents, Efrain retrieved a dozen pink pills, a vial of liquid and two syringes. His mother flushed the pills and kept the vial. Efrain, who played football, promised to stop using steroids. It was a promise that no one doubts he kept.Three and a half weeks later, Mrs. Marrero found Efrain in a bedroom at home, a bullet in his head, a .22-caliber pistol in his hand. He left no explanation for his suicide. He had no history of depression or mental illness. He was 19.” [4]There are thousands more stories like this. If doping were to be made legal, this would increase drastically. As well as the other health related issues associated with it. Unfair AdvantageEveryone responds to steroids differently [5]. If doping were to be legal, this would give athletes an unfair advantage over others, based not on skill, but on doping.Ruins Purpose of SportThe meaning of sports is in the values that it exhibits. The forms of human excellence it promotes, and how each athlete strives to perfect his or her skill. Doping ruins this purpose, and thus should not be permitted.[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[2] http://www.mayoclinic.org...[3] http://www.evolutionary.org...[4] http://www.nytimes.com...[5] http://tinyurl.com...

Improving safety standards in sport It does not take a lot for chemists to produce performance enhancing drugs, the Scientific American reports: “Rogue scientists start with testosterone or its commercially available analogues and then make minor structural modifications to yield similarly active derivatives.” The underground chemists make no effort to test their creations for effectiveness or safety, of course. Production of a simple new steroid compound would require "lab equipment costing maybe $50,000 to $100,000,". Depending on the number of chemical reactions needed for synthesis, "some of them could be made in a week or two. Others might take six months to a year."(1) As a result of legalizing performance-enhancing drugs a backstreet industry can become regulated as a result there will be much more control and testing to ensure the health and safety of the athletes who take the drugs.    Steven Ashley, Doping by Design, Scientific American 01/12/2004, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=doping-by-design, accessed 05/19/2011

Freedom of choice. If athletes wish to take drugs in search of improved performances, let them do s... Freedom of choice. If athletes wish to take drugs in search of improved performances, let them do so. They harm nobody but themselves and should be treated as adults, capable of making rational decisions upon the basis of widely-available information. Even if there are adverse health effects in the long-term, this is also true of both tobacco and boxing, which remain legal.

If legal then drugs can be controlled and monitored by doctors, making them much safer. Athletes on... If legal then drugs can be controlled and monitored by doctors, making them much safer. Athletes on drugs today often take far more than is needed for performance-enhancement, running needless health risks as a result, simply because of ignorance and the need for secrecy. Legalisation allows more information to become available and open medical supervision will avoid many of the health problems currently associated with performance-enhancing drugs.

There is no distinction between "natural" and synthetic methods of performance enhancement It is true that it is difficult to decide where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate performance enhancement. However we should continue to draw a line nonetheless. This line should be drawn at protecting athletes from harmful drugs and preserving the spirit of fair play and unaided competition between human beings in their peak of natural fitness. The special diet and sport training equipment, which may seem very hard and exeptional, have been designed based on serious scientific research proved and tested to fit with long-term training of athletes. Hard practice to achieve the best performance with help of these professional methods is completely a different from taking steroids and growth hormones for immediate result.

WC Debate - RR: Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for use in all major sports leagues Thanks to Actionsspeak for clarifying his case and for his opening remarks. This looks to be an interesting debate. I ask the audience to recognize that even his case is a departure from status quo. He would like to afford the capacity to decide whether steroid and hormone usage is allowed in any given sport to the sporting leagues themselves, and thus take it out of the hands of legislators. Con's third contention made it clear that the league, not lawmakers, should have the right to determine how a sport is played. So what we're really discussing here is whether or not the option should be available to individuals or to sporting leagues, not whether their usage should be legalized or not. This is an important distinction, and one that should be kept in mind that the American legal structures [1] aren't going to be an impediment in either of our cases as this debate goes forward. Now, onto my rebuttals. On Equality: 1. Sports aren't about equality. If it was, we wouldn't have winners and losers. The system of competition is meant to elevate those who are better at what they do, whether that's as a result of inherent capacities or how well they use their resources. No one is entitled to play professional sports " it's a privilege requiring enormous sacrifice and massive risk, whether they use steroids or not, and most walk away. If Con wants equality, sports isn't the place to find it. 2. Sports aren't equal. Recall two things I said in R2. First, I discussed what athletes do in order to get in shape. Flying into the mountains to thicken the blood and increase the flow of oxygen through their bodies isn't something everyone can do before competitions, nor can they all find training facilities above a certain altitude. Even among those that can, not all of them will have access to top of the line equipment, masseuses, trainers, or all the other expenses required to build muscle quickly and efficiently. They don't all have access to the same megadoses of vitamin pills, dietary supplements, equipment, clothing, or medical treatments that are allowed to everyone in status quo. Hell, things like hyperbaric oxygen chambers, which increase the rate of recovery for players, are being purchased by many teams and players at tremendous costs, providing them and only them an appreciable advantage.[2] and would continue to be allowed in Con's case. Why are steroids so special? Second, I talked about how some people just have higher inherent capacities. They produce more testosterone, HGH or erythropoeitin, they can endure a faster heartbeat, or even the fact that they produce normal blood cells. Not everyone has those advantages, and Con has provided no way for anyone to make up for any such deficiencies. Only my plan seeks to solve for these concerns. 3. Con's case is worse for equality. Black market drugs are more expensive, harder to find,[3] and more dangerous, but more on that last point later. But you can look at this point one of two ways. You can accept that steroid usage causes more steroid usage, in which case Con's case is more detrimental there's already a system in place where athletes feel the need to use steroids and hormones to succeed. The only difference is that they can't use the cheapest, safest, and most well-known steroids prescribed directly by doctors at specific doses and lower cost. Con provides absolutely no reason to believe that legalization will increase usage over status quo. Even if he does, recognize that equality is only a larger problem within his case and in the status quo. The only reason why an advantage such as steroids would be considered unfair is if they're unequally distributed, but as I pointed out in the previous round, the distribution is currently as unequal as it gets. Using basic steroids and hormones instead of what's available on the black market will lower, not raise, the barrier for entry, and increase fairness to all athletes. Or you can notice that this argument has no warrant. Con asserts that steroid usage among some athletes will spread to other athletes who want to compete. This is nothing more than an assertion, and one which is not well explained. Mandatory testing programs among MLB players have revealed that a whopping 5-7% of athletes were using steroids[4], which means 93-95% of athletes were able to play at a very high level without coercion. There's no reason to believe that legalization will cause these numbers to balloon out of control. The uncertainty regarding who is using steroids/hormones in status quo, if anything, creates more impetus to use than a transparent system where everyone who does use does so openly. 4. Con also allows sports leagues to create their own barriers to entry for those with anemia, low testosterone production, reduced muscle growth, and anything else that puts them at a marked disadvantage. He allows individual leagues to discriminate against these groups, harming any sense of equality by denying access to those who could easily keep up if they had access to the available resources. On Health Concerns: 1. Athletes are already forced into an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle and die young. I made this clear in the previous round, but there's no significant difference between any of the health harms presented by Con and the ones I presented in R2. Con will have to address my point that these harms are non-unique and my hypocrisy arguments as well in the next round in order to win this point. 2. Health concerns are worse in an environment where black market drugs are the only ones being used. The reality is that the health concerns are far more excessive using designer steroids and gene doping, as I pointed out last round. Worse yet, his case only exacerbates these harms by legalizing their usage in the general community, but not in all sports. In my case, incentive to use designer steroids and gene doping is erased due to their expense and ineffectiveness by comparison. Con encourages the legal usage of the most dangerous doping substances. 3. Each athlete accepts these health concerns the moment they take these drugs. There's no reason why athletes shouldn't be able to take these concerns on themselves, especially if they know about them in advance. Since Con's case encourages athletes to pursue drugs with unknown health harms, his forces a lower capacity to consent than mine does. On "The league's rights": 1. There's no impact here. Con doesn't explain how changes in the way sports are played is actually harmful. Even if this is certain to happen, the lack of a harm makes it unimportant. 2. There's no warrant for this claim. Con doesn't explain how a change in one rule affects another one. The only possible warrant is a slippery slope fallacy, which has no rational basis in this debate. Worse yet, even if it was true that one rule change could link to another, the rules he's trying to link have nothing in common. The rules of what an athlete can do to their own bodies have no effect on whether any player can disregard the basic rules of how a sport is played in competition. 3. The league doesn't have a right to deny access based on any person's characteristics, training regimen, or nutritional intake. This is one of the very few influences they have on what athletes can take and use for playing their sports, and it's done with extreme hypocrisy based on shaky reasoning. Leagues should not be allowed to spurn athletes who they think have an unfair advantage based on other characteristics, and yet Con wants us to believe that this is crossing some special line. With that, I leave it to my opponent to rebut my case and respond to these arguments. 1. http://www.steroidabuse.com... 2. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com... 3. http://www.theguardian.com... 4. http://mlb.mlb.com...

Drugs in Sport Freedom of choice. If athletes wish to take drugs in search of improved performances, let them do s...

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports There is no distinction between "natural" and synthetic methods of performance enhancement

Natural/unnatural distinction untenable. Already athletes use all sorts of dietary supplements, exe... It is true that it is difficult to decide where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate performance enhancement. However we should continue to draw a line nonetheless. First, to protect athletes from harmful drugs. Secondly, to preserve the spirit of fair play and unaided competition between human beings in their peak of natural fitness. Eating a balanced diet and wearing the best shoes are clearly in a different category from taking steroids and growth hormones. We should continue to make this distinction and aim for genuine drug-free athletic competitions.

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports Permitting the use of performace enhancers would have a coercive effect on athletes who would otherwise avoid drug use

Legalize Performance-Enhancing Drug for Sportman PED (Performance-Enhancing Drug) gives disadvantages for the sportsman. PED should not be legalized by everyone for the sportman. PED gives disdvantages, specially in terms of health!

Professional athletes using Performance-Enhancing drugs I have no other arguments at the moment, and thus will wait until my opponent provides rebuttals.

WC Debate - RR: Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for use in all major sports leagues I'd like to welcome Actionsspeak to this round of the Group B Round Robin debate in the World Cup Debate tournament! It is my pleasure to debate with him, as I have not yet had the opportunity to do so and look forward to it greatly. I wish him luck in this and his other debates. With that, I'll move into explaining my policy to uphold the above resolution. Before I get into it though, I'd just like the audience to realize that this will not be a debate of my policy versus status quo, but rather one of policy versus policy. Con will present a policy as well in his opening round, and we will debate the merits of those two policies. So, my policy is pretty self-explanatory. The U. S. will legalize the use of anabolic steroids and hormones of all sorts in major sporting leagues. This will remove any current infrastructure based on detection of their usage in sports, though health examinations and basic protective measures will remain in place. Brief definition analysis: "Anabolic steroids, technically known as anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS), are drugs that are structurally related to the cyclic steroid ring system and have similar effects to testosterone in the body. They increase protein within cells, especially in skeletal muscles. " . http://en.wikipedia.org... Hormones " In this case, we'll mainly be discussing the usage of major groups of hormones like erythropoietin and human growth hormone. I'll clarify each: "Erythropoietin. .. , or EPO, is a glycoprotein hormone that controls erythropoiesis, or red blood cell production. It is a cytokine (protein signaling molecule) for erythrocyte (red blood cell) precursors in the bone marrow. " . http://en.wikipedia.org... "Growth hormone (GH or HGH). .. is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction and regeneration in humans and other animals. " . http://en.wikipedia.org... As we are both discussing policies, the burden of proof is shared, as each of us must defend our individual policies while providing reasons why the others' policy is harmful. The debate will consist of 4 rounds, 8,000 characters a round, with 72 hours for us to make our arguments.

Steroids should be legalized in sports. First of all, steroids gives one the ability to be stronger, it doesn't automatically make on stronger, it heals muscles after workouts quicker, letting you work out more--work harder.This is false. A review spanning more than three decades of experimental studies in men found that body weight may increase by 2–5 kg as a result of short-term (<10 weeks) AAS use, which may be attributed mainly to an increase of lean mass. Animal studies also found that fat mass was reduced, but most studies in humans failed to elucidate significant fat mass decrements. The effects on lean body mass have been shown to be dose-dependent. Both muscle hypertrophy and the formation of new muscle fibers have been observed. The hydration of lean mass remains unaffected by AAS use, although small increments of blood volume cannot be ruled out.[5] The upper region of the body (thorax, neck, shoulders, and upper arm) seems to be more susceptible for AAS than other body regions because of predominance of androgen receptors in the upper body. The largest difference in muscle fiber size between AAS users and non-users was observed in type I muscle fibers of the vastus lateralis and the trapezius muscle as a result of long-term AAS self-administration. After drug withdrawal, the effects fade away slowly, but may persist for more than 6–12 weeks after cessation of AAS use.[5] The same review observed strength improvements in the range of 5–20% of baseline strength, depending largely on the drugs and dose used as well as the administration period. Overall, the exercise where the most significant improvements were observed is the bench press.[5] For almost two decades, it was assumed that AAS exerted significant effects only in experienced strength athletes, particularly based on the studies of Hervey and coworkers.[23][24] In 1996, a randomized controlled trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated, however, that even in novice athletes a 10-week strength training program accompanied by testosterone enanthate at 600 mg/week may improve strength more than training alone does.[5][25] The same study found that dose to be sufficient to significantly improve lean muscle mass relative to placebo even in subjects that did not exercise at all.[25] A 2001 study by the same first author, showed that the anabolic effects of testosterone enanthate were highly dose dependent. [http://en.wikipedia.org...] So, you are wrong in your claim that steroids simply heal muscles. Empirical data shows that steroids can significantly increase lean muscle mass and improve ability in exercises such as the bench press. Steroids directly increase athletes' strength. You say sports is a judge of someone's athletic prowess, and that is how much they practice and how much of an affinity one has for the sport. So, amount of time practiced is actually increased with steroids as I mentioned before. Judging the athletic prowess of a person and the athletic prowess of a person enhanced with steroids are very different things. This isn't to say that there would be no reason to test the athletic prowess of various people enhanced with drugs. But this implies that each person participating is taking the exact same amount of the exact same drug. Even if this could be monitored, that EVERY SINGLE ATHLETE participating in a given sport is taking the same stuff to preserve fairness, what you have now done is corrupted the sport. Now it is virtually impossible for someone who doesn't take the drug to go pro when everyone else is using drugs. In essence, you're forcing people who want to play professional sports to mess with their bodies and take drugs with questionable effects. And what if someone wants to watch sports where you don't have a bunch of artifically enhanced druggies? Also, steroids show the affinity of players-- it shows how they would take risks to succeed in something they love. With all due respect, are you serious? First, that isn't what I meant by affinity, although this is just a misunderstanding I suppose. By affinity I meant moreso talent. But regardless, why in the world would we want long-term and permanent damage to be mandatory for professional athletes? Who in their right mind wants to watch a ton of people do something RECREATIONAL while slowly harming their bodies? There are enough diseases and wars in the world that hurt people, that we don't need to add to damages with our recreational activities. Yes, steroids are harmful to the user's body, that is known, but are smoking and alcohol outlawed? Also, athletes know the risks of taking steroids, and that is their choice, we can't go making choices for them, they need to make their own decisions. In addition, stepping on any professional sports field is screwing up your body. In football and hockey, players crush each other, leaving brain and other injuries. In baseball, players put nearly 100 pounds of stress on their arms each time they throw. Every time someone plays pro sports, they are "screwing up their body" as you said. Players know this, but still take those risks, just like they should be allowed to for steroids. The only reason smoking isn't outlawed is because it is a custom borrowed from before we knew it was harmful. Alcohol isn't outlawed because it has little to no harmful effects at all if used reasonably. If we are comparing to other substances, how about illegal drugs like meth and crack cocaine? But that isn't even the main problem with steroids in sports. Even if you are a libertarian and hold that people should be able to do whatever they want to themselves as long as it doesn't affect others, the primary problem with steroids, as I have mentioned, is corruption of every sport in which they are allowed. Your speech about "choice" makes you come off as some sort of libertarian. But any reasonable libertarian knows that the key qualification is that whatever the person does does not harm others. Corruption of sports in general and essentially kicking out anyone who doesn't also want to participate in your self-destructive actions is harmful to others. Hockey and football are unfortunate cases. I'll speak about football. Part of the essence of football is the violent tackling that occurs. This is a major problem and not a good thing. There are cases of children who received concussions that could cause massive permanent damage if not treated, but whose coaches hid the fact so that the children could continue playing. This is exactlly the sort of corruption of sporting I mean. It isn't worth it any more when the costs outweigh the small benefits of entertainment. If we allow steroids in sports, the same thing will happen, where coaches will make sure their children get on steroids while young. Do you know what kind of damage that does to the bodies of adolescents? You would have to ban steroids for younger people and allow it for older, but this is simply unreasonable. Steroids will make sports even more entertaining then they are now. Fans absolutely love records being broken and athletes playing at a higher and higher level. This is what players can achieve with steroids. If they don't want to risk their health in the future by taking steroids, then maybe they aren't cut out for an industry where it is all about doing everything to succeed. It is definitely going to make fans more appreciative of different sporting events. People will love it? Then why was there such a violent backlash when it turned out Lance Armstrong had used drugs? Fans liked it at the time because they thought it was legitimate, and this perfectly supports my point. When people found out the real reason for some of his success, he was removed from the Hall of Fame and even lost support for his cancer foundation. There is a common understanding among people that what athletes do means nothing if they are simply artifically enhanced to do so.

Current rules are very arbitrary and unfair:e.g. cold remedies denied to athletes, even in sports wh... What about the children? Even if performance-enhancing drugs were only legalised for adults, the definition of this varies from country to country. Teenage athletes train alongside adult ones and share the same coaches, so many would succumb to the temptation and pressure to use drugs if these were widely available and effectively endorsed by legalisation. Not only are such young athletes unable to make a fully rational, informed choice about drug-taking, the health impacts upon growing bodies would be even worse than for adult users. It would also send a positive message about drug culture in general, making the use of “recreational drugs” with all their accompanying evils more widespread.

Drug Use in Sports My last round arguments was seen mostly jokes, But however in this round I will get more serious. DRUGS IN SPORT The use of performance enhancing drugs in the modern Olympics is on record as early as the games of the third Olympiad, When Thomas Hicks won the marathon after receiving an injection of strychnine in the middle of the race. 1 The first official ban on "stimulating substances" by a sporting organisation was introduced by the International Amateur Athletic Federation in 1928. 2 Using drugs to cheat in sport is not new, But it is becoming more effective. In 1976, The East German swimming team won 11 out of 13 Olympic events, And later sued the government for giving them anabolic steroids. 3 Yet despite the health risks, And despite the regulating bodies" attempts to eliminate drugs from sport, The use of illegal substances is widely known to be rife. It hardly raises an eyebrow now when some famous athlete fails a dope test. In 1992, Vicky Rabinowicz interviewed small groups of athletes. She found that Olympic athletes, In general, Believed that most successful athletes were using banned substances. 4 Much of the writing on the use of drugs in sport is focused on this kind of anecdotal evidence. There is very little rigorous, Objective evidence because the athletes are doing something that is taboo, Illegal, And sometimes highly dangerous. The anecdotal picture tells us that our attempts to eliminate drugs from sport have failed. In the absence of good evidence, We need an analytical argument to determine what we should do. CONDEMNED TO CHEATING? We are far from the days of amateur sporting competition. Elite athletes can earn tens of millions of dollars every year in prize money alone, And millions more in sponsorships and endorsements. The lure of success is great. But the penalties for cheating are small. A six month or one year ban from competition is a small penalty to pay for further years of multimillion dollar success. Drugs are much more effective today than they were in the days of strychnine and sheep"s testicles. Studies involving the anabolic steroid androgen showed that, Even in doses much lower than those used by athletes, Muscular strength could be improved by 5"20%. 5 Most athletes are also relatively unlikely to ever undergo testing. The International Amateur Athletic Federation estimates that only 10"15% of participating athletes are tested in each major competition. 6 The enormous rewards for the winner, The effectiveness of the drugs, And the low rate of testing all combine to create a cheating "game" that is irresistible to athletes. Kjetil Haugen7 investigated the suggestion that athletes face a kind of prisoner"s dilemma regarding drugs. His game theoretic model shows that, Unless the likelihood of athletes being caught doping was raised to unrealistically high levels, Or the payoffs for winning were reduced to unrealistically low levels, Athletes could all be predicted to cheat. The current situation for athletes ensures that this is likely, Even though they are worse off as a whole if everyone takes drugs, Than if nobody takes drugs. Drugs such as erythropoietin (EPO) and growth hormone are natural chemicals in the body. As technology advances, Drugs have become harder to detect because they mimic natural processes. In a few years, There will be many undetectable drugs. Haugen"s analysis predicts the obvious: that when the risk of being caught is zero, Athletes will all choose to cheat. The recent Olympic games in Athens were the first to follow the introduction of a global anti-doping code. From the lead up to the games to the end of competition, 3000 drug tests were carried out: 2600 urine tests and 400 blood tests for the endurance enhancing drug EPO. 8 From these, 23 athletes were found to have taken a banned substance"the most ever in an Olympic games. 9 Ten of the men"s weightlifting competitors were excluded. The goal of "cleaning" up the sport is unattainable. Further down the track the spectre of genetic enhancement looms dark and large. UNFAIR? People do well at sport as a result of the genetic lottery that happened to deal them a winning hand. Genetic tests are available to identify those with the greatest potential. If you have one version of the ACE gene, You will be better at long distance events. If you have another, You will be better at short distance events. Black Africans do better at short distance events because of biologically superior muscle type and bone structure. Sport discriminates against the genetically unfit. Sport is the province of the genetic elite (or freak). The starkest example is the Finnish skier Eero Maentyranta. In 1964, He won three gold medals. Subsequently it was found he had a genetic mutation that meant that he "naturally" had 40"50% more red blood cells than average. 15 Was it fair that he had significant advantage given to him by chance? The ability to perform well in sporting events is determined by the ability to deliver oxygen to muscles. Oxygen is carried by red blood cells. The more red blood cells, The more oxygen you can carry. This in turn controls an athlete"s performance in aerobic exercise. EPO is a natural hormone that stimulates red blood cell production, Raising the packed cell volume (PCV)"the percentage of the blood comprised of red blood cells. EPO is produced in response to anaemia, Haemorrhage, Pregnancy, Or living at altitude. Athletes began injecting recombinant human EPO in the 1970s, And it was officially banned in 1985. 16 At sea level, The average person has a PCV of 0. 4"0. 5. It naturally varies; 5% of people have a packed cell volume above 0. 5, 17 and that of elite athletes is more likely to exceed 0. 5, Either because their high packed cell volume has led them to success in sport or because of their training. 18 Raising the PCV too high can cause health problems. The risk of harm rapidly rises as PCV gets above 50%. One study showed that in men whose PCV was 0. 51 or more, Risk of stroke was significantly raised (relative risk R02;=R02; 2. 5), After adjustment for other causes of stroke. 19 At these levels, Raised PCV combined with hypertension would cause a ninefold increase in stroke risk. In endurance sports, Dehydration causes an athlete"s blood to thicken, Further raising blood viscosity and pressure. 20 What begins as a relatively low risk of stroke or heart attack can rise acutely during exercise. In the early 1990s, After EPO doping gained popularity but before tests for its presence were available, Several Dutch cyclists died in their sleep due to inexplicable cardiac arrest. This has been attributed to high levels of EPO doping. 21 The risks from raising an athlete"s PCV too high are real and serious. Use of EPO is endemic in cycling and many other sports. In 1998, The Festina team was expelled from the Tour de France after trainer Willy Voet was caught with 400 vials of performance enhancing drugs. 22 The following year, The World Anti-Doping Agency was established as a result of the scandal. However, EPO is extremely hard to detect and its use has continued. Italy"s Olympic anti-doping director observed in 2003 that the amount of EPO sold in Italy outweighed the amount needed for sick people by a factor of six. 23 In addition to trying to detect EPO directly, The International Cycling Union requires athletes to have a PCV no higher than 0. 5. But 5% of people naturally have a PCV higher than 0. 5. Athletes with a naturally high PCV cannot race unless doctors do a number of tests to show that their PCV is natural. Charles Wegelius was a British rider who was banned and then cleared in 2003. He had had his spleen removed in 1998 after an accident, And as the spleen removes red blood cells, Its absence resulted in an increased PCV. 24 There are other ways to increase the number of red blood cells that are legal. Altitude training can push the PCV to dangerous, Even fatal, Levels. More recently, Hypoxic air machines have been used to simulate altitude training. The body responds by releasing natural EPO and growing more blood cells, So that it can absorb more oxygen with every breath. The Hypoxico promotional material quotes Tim Seaman, A US athlete, Who claims that the hypoxic air tent has "given my blood the legal "boost" that it needs to be competitive at the world level. "25 There is one way to boost an athlete"s number of red blood cells that is completely undetectable:26 autologous blood doping. In this process, Athletes remove some blood, And reinject it after their body has made new blood to replace it. This method was popular before recombinant human EPO became available. "By allowing everyone to take performance enhancing drugs, We level the playing field. " There is no difference between elevating your blood count by altitude training, By using a hypoxic air machine, Or by taking EPO. But the last is illegal. Some competitors have high PCVs and an advantage by luck. Some can afford hypoxic air machines. Is this fair? Nature is not fair. Ian Thorpe has enormous feet which give him an advantage that no other swimmer can get, No matter how much they exercise. Some gymnasts are more flexible, And some basketball players are seven feet tall. By allowing everyone to take performance enhancing drugs, We level the playing field. We remove the effects of genetic inequality. Far from being unfair, Allowing performance enhancement promotes equality.

Drugs will undermine the central philosophy of sport The show and the celebration of human physical achievement is what makes sport enjoyable to the public. The reason people enjoy sport is because it is a demonstration of what other fellow human beings can achieve and what humans can achieve collectively, as a species. A spectacle is designed to amaze. It doesn’t need to be human achievement to be amazing (no one would call monster truck driving a sport). So, when humans start taking drugs to improve performance, it is no longer a sport, it is a spectacle, because there is no human physical achievement, but instead a chemical achievement.   It also becomes a celebration not of human physical achievement, but of human intellectual achievement, of who can design the best drugs. Even with fancy running shoes, we are still celebrating human achievement, which will not happen once you take it to the extreme of allowing drug use. This doesn’t benefit athletes in the long run. Athletes won’t be celebrated but scientists will!

Performance Enhancing Drugs Would be Legalize in World Sport Tournament Is there any evidence of the behaviors of athlete's replicated by their fans? In the aftermath of the Lance Armstrong incident, there has not been an epidemic of people using steroids. People turned away from Armstrong, and he will never get his reputation back You have given no evidence that eating healthy and exercising more efficiently are any more natural than steroids. A smiley face does not count as an argument.

Drug Use in Sports Since I am going to argue for the use of drugs like stimulant, Anabolic-androgenic steroids, Erythropoietin and Blood Doping in sports events. I hereby list out my arguments: C1: Drugs like stimulant and etc. Are performance boosting drugs during sport events: Drugs like stimulant and also muscle/hormone growth are common practice in some sport areas, For example: it is common knowledge that the fighters in AFL or other television events use these drugs before the event happened. Despite many arguments that these drugs are harmful to human body, Body stimulant drugs are used in many normal competitions. C2: The current technology is expensive, And also inadequate enough. One of the most famous quote in the tour of france is the following: You have no idea what the Tour de France is", Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, Because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15. We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going? Here. . . " He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, For our eyes. This is chloroform, For our gums. " "This", Ville said, Emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees. " "And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, Here are the pills. " Each pulled out three boxes. "The truth is", Francis said, "that we keep going on dynamite. " Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off, Then of their bodies being drained by diarrhoea, Before continuing: "At night, In our rooms, We can't sleep. We twitch and dance and jig about as though we were doing St Vitus's Dance. . . " "There's less flesh on our bodies than on a skeleton", Francis said. This might be a joke, But the truth is, These long range races are suffering to the people who are participating in them. Also, Lance Armstrong, A legendary doping figure in the Tour De France had also talked about 1 single thing: "It is impossible to go on without drugs. "

As an international sporting committee we would lift the doping ban I am totally for lifting the doping regulations and doping ban. Firstly, today we already acknowledge and accept the use of various utilities, equipment, medication etc. not only to improve our lives but to accomplish amazing feats. A long time, the Royal Geographic Society in UK refused to allow mountain climbers to use oxygen tanks because this was a non-human device and as such, any achievement through using it is not a 'completely human' achievement. We have gone a long way from these times. Climbers use oxygen tanks to put their name on world peaks, swimmers use special suits (often engineered by big companies) to break records and body builders use creatine and protein shakes to improve performance during workouts and recovery times. When we can already agree that these things are allowed, where do you draw the line between something which is 'natural' and something which is 'unnatural'. Some of the food you eat already contain the exact chemicals in drugs. Does eating more of these foods and absorbing its nutrients therefore be considered as illegal drug intake? Secondly, the regulation and detection of athletes who are guilty is extremely inefficient. It is just too hard to monitor every single player in a tournament. This is evident when Russia was found guilty of mass doping of their athletes. Mamadou Sakho, the football player was banned ONLY AFTER his team Liverpool managed to enter the finals of the Europa League. His performance had already affected the match and arguably, his team would probably not have won. Also, accidents happen. Examples include Maria Sharapova and Lee Chong Wei who were given long bans just for accidental intake of drugs. It is hard to imagine this was intentional because they are already big names in their respective sports. Hence, for these reasons we should lift the regulations and ban concerning drugs for athletes. By allowing everyone to take anything, we are actually levelling the playing field with a lot less hassle.

Protecting the health of athletes Laws should in general protect people from making uninformed decisions. Due to the potential severe consequences the ban has to be upheld. An analogy with the seatbelt can be used: the government forces people to use them, because of the possibility of severe injury in case we do not use it.    The use of performance-enhancing drugs is the opposite – use can lead to severe health problems.   Thus, if all people are treated as equals under law, then the law should equally protect athletes as the law does other would- be drug users. Equality before law also means athletes can’t be exempt from the moral standards we have for others. Firstly due to value of life and secondly because many times athletes themselves are not aware of the severe consequences of performance enhancing drugs.   BBC Drugs and Sports (GCSE Bitesize):  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/pe/performance/1_performance_drugsinsport_rev1.shtml , accessed 05/15/2011

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports Protecting the health of athletes

As an international sporting committee we would lift the doping ban What kind of message would we be sending our children if we allowed doping. A young boy with dreams of becoming a professional athlete would feel he has to use drugs in order to compete and pursue his dreams. We as a society should not promote the use of drugs. And you can't compare a special swimming suit or an oxygen tank to a chemical that has negative side effects on an athletes body. We should encourage our athletes to be as healthy as possible. Just because it is hard to screen every athlete for PEDs and the results havn't been perfect doesn't mean we should give up.

Steroids in sports. To clarify, I use 'advanced training' to denote the accepted methods and measures that pro athletes take to reach the top of the sport. I'll go point by point here, with some responses. You make a couple of key arguments. 1) Purity You argue that steroids would taint the pure nature of professional sports and allowing external 'alterations' would skew human performance. This argument would work great, if it hadn't already happened. It would only be true if regular people, who were athletically talented, were our pro atheletes. This is obviously not the case. Gone are the days when guys like Babe Ruth could rely on natural human ability. Todays pro athletes already use extensive, extra-human workout routines and get their hands on any kind of herbal substance, protein formula, or other legal aid that might give them a boost. Do you think that a guy who has been hardcore training since adolescence, takes dozens of supplements a day, and is paid ridiculous amounts of money to do nothing but find some kind of edge that will make him a better player is a 'pure' representation of human ability? You can not find one single professional athlete that is free from outside alteration, legal or not. If pros were pure human beings I would agree, but anymore, they are just engineered muscle. Any notion of purity went out the window decades ago. 2) Allowing Steroids is not fair to those who don't want to use them. You argue that, if we allow steroids, players who don't elect to risk their health would be unfairly ostricized from the sport, because of lower performance. Again, isn't this already true? Players who do not choose to adopt the newest and most performance beneficial supplements and training techniques are left in the perverbial dust as well. If an athlete elects not to train intensely or receive the legal aid available, his skills are not on par with others and he/she is not able to compete. Now, it seems I am avoiding the obvious. "Training isn't harmful to their health, steroids are harmful. We shouldn't make people harm themselves in order to compete professionally." This seems like a reasonable objection, but in reality, again, this is already true. It seems like common sense that being in good physical condition would be good for you. But, new studies and literature show that living the life of a professional athelete leads to more severe injuries, a shorter lifespan, and worse health sooner(http://www.eric.ed.gov...) (http://www.informaworld.com...). Professional athletes may seem like they are in peak physical condition, but the risk they assume with 'natural' and 'traditional' training regiments are harmful to their health as well. Again, I would agree with you here if we were not already to this point. As professional athletics stands now, the effects that steroids has on the body, are a drop in the pond compared to the risks and trials that it faces now. Those athletes who do not want to take steroids are free to choose not to, if that renders them obsolete (which is arguable), then professionalism will leave them behind, just as your 'natural' methods have done to so many athletes before them in the past. 3) Fairness and being a good-role model You argue that allowing steroids would eliminate fairness and poorly influence kids. This however, as I stated in my first round, is merely a consequence of steroid's current illegality. No one looks down on A-Rod for drinking protein shakes, even though high-protein diets have been shown to increase risks on bone cancer and osteoporosis (http://manbir-online.com...) (http://www.futurepundit.com...). If protein supplements were banned, we would have the same terrible view of them as we do steroids. But, since they are legal, and widely accepted, we are cool with them. The same goes for numerous other legal aids. The only reason steroid use has a bad connotation is because of its illegality. Steroid users are looked at as cheaters because they used an illegal substance. If steroids were legal, these athletes would no longer be cheaters as everyone would be on a sanctioned, level playing field. I'm not saying this would happen immediately, but as time grew on and steroids were more accepted, the bad label would fall away. The message to kids has already been molested, and steroids would not send a 'do drugs' message. If kids model athletes that closely, why do we allow ball players to chew tobacco? Why are people like Ricky Williams, Michael Vick, and Tank Johnson still allowed to play, despite numerous arrests, prison sentences and admitted use of narcotics? Its not like proffessional sports has some kind of role-model clause. This argument would only hold weight if the image of the professional athlete hadn't already been skewed beyond recognition. Still, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to send the right message, I agree. The fact is, kids DO look up to athletes. But again, where is the line here? With proper understanding and parenting, kids are already told that some things are strictly for professionals. Do we tell kids to spend eight hours in the gym and dedicate their entire lives to training, or do we tell them that its a game and that they should have fun with it? Do we tell little kids who like to ride horses that jockeys need to be bulimic in order to get a job, or that track stars use a 'puke index' to measure how hard they should train? Or, do we tell them to try hard, but have fun? Obviously, steroids would function in the same way. It is already understood and told to kids, that pros take measures that they should not. Steroids would just be lumped into this existing category. We obviously don't tell kids to use testosterone enhancers and synergistic muscle volumizers, which are legal. Why would steroids be an exception here? Again, I think this loops back to the negative connotation that steroids carry, rather than the differences they have with already legal training methods. In short, steroids ARE just the next step in professional sports. There is no denying the health risk involved, but that hasn't stopped us from legalizing other extreme training methods. We shouldn't force steroids on our athletes by any means, but that avenue should be open to those who seek it, just as other extreme avenues are open to those who are willing to use them. Athletes would remain the terrible role models they are, or at least sports would handle this advance as it has handled every other one, with caution and responsibility. Any notion of purity or fairness is all relative. Athletes of the past could, in no way, compete with the legal ones of today because of the progression sports has taken. Our athletes are more athletic because of the then taboo methods that are now legal. Sports needs to take the obvious next step. I realize that this position seems terrible, but that is only because of the bad rap steroids have gotten as a result of their illegality. We need to get past this media-painted image of steroids and realize that science has allowed athletes to progress before and is doing it again. Barry Bond's wouldn't be such a terrible guy if steroids were legal, then again, maybe we would have more guys putting up his numbers too.

Athletes should be free to take risks when training and competing Freedom of choice: If athletes wish to take drugs in search of improved performances, let them do so. They harm nobody but themselves and should be treated as adults, capable of making rational decisions upon the basis of widely-available information. Even if there are adverse health effects in the long-term, this is also true of tobacco, alcohol and boxing, which remain legal. We allow world class athletes to train for 23 hours a week (on average), adjust their diets and endanger themselves by pushing the boundaries of their body. We let them do it, because it is what they chose which is best for them. According to the NFL Player Association the average life expectancy of an NFL player is 58 years of age (1). Thus already we allow athletes to endanger their lives, give them the choice of a lifestyle. Why not also extend this moral precedent to drugs?   Judd Bissiotto, 15 Surprising facts about world athletes, http://strengthplanet.com/other/15-surprising-facts-about-world-class-athletes.htm, accessed 05/18/2011

should doing be made legal in sports what do u mean when u say that its rampant and so be made legal. .. .rapes are also rampant so do you mean to say that they should also be made legal? Another point in my view is that if doping is made legal then whether the spirit of sports will give up to the circumstances. Then sports will transform from competition between the skills of the players to the wars between the pharmaceutical labs and industries of the two countries. The country which possess the advanced medicine will have a straight win and advanced medicines could only be achieved by the countries which have a hefty budget amount to support the industry. This will directly lead to deprive the economically weak countries to even dare to challenge the the so called developed countries and will be completely overshadowed by them. the world will then be confined to these rich countries which will snatch this very chance of the poor countries to make their presence felt. Use of steroids made legal will make the strong even stronger and weal negligible. I would like to make you recall the real motto of organizing sports to bring countries or organizations together together not to demean anyone. Yes winning should be the main thought, but the path used for achieving it should also be kept in mind. The steroids will also have a degrading effect in the health of the sportsmen which will make them succumb to the particular drug and may even take his/her life . Winning the game at the cost of someones life is not that should be done.

Drugs in sports with that being said, drugs should be allowed in sports because it is just another means of trying to get ahead. Over training can be unhealthy and result in death but that isn't being stopped. Simply think of it this way, every athlete (to my knowledge) wants to do the best that they can in their particular sporting event/ field so why shouldn't they be allowed to make their own choices as to how they get to where they want to be?

Steroids in sports. I believe steroids should be allowed in sports. It would maximize the skills of most players and is the next step in advanced training. The primary reason steroids get a bad rap is because they are against the rules and viewed as cheating. Players who don't want to take steroids can be free to make that choice, just as some players don't choose certain training methods now. Players who want to take the health risks associated with steroids should be able to do so.

Steroids Should Be Legal in Professional Sports 1) Steroids further human achievement and comparisons between human achievements in different eras are moot since the rules change so much. Steroids do further human achievement in sports. But at what cost? What is the purpose of competiting in sports in the first place? Steroids have many negative adverse affects physically (shrunken testicles, acne . . .) and mentally (aggression, violence . . .). The purpose of competing in sports is to use skill, knowledge, and physical investment as a way of competing with others. If we allow sterioids, the best players will only be those people who have cutting edge steroids. Also, it sends a message to kids growing up that they should abandon the values of fair play and seek to better themselves by finding the latest substance.2) The sports benefit economically by allowing performance-enhancing drugs. Someone lived to 122 yeard old, a feat only possible by having new, not primitive technology. The media craze didn't know at the time of their steroid use. Solving a huge math problem but always turning around and using a hidden calculator before turning back around to reveal the answer is much more impressive if people didn't know you had the calculator. People's fascination with sports would die out if they knew everyone was hyped up on steroids because it encourages unfair competition (only those who have the best, newest juice will have the benefits). In response to the analogy, living to 122 years old by having newer technology is a good thing - because there are not the same negatives associated with increasing the maximum livable age opposed to the negatives with steroid use (physical and mental side-effects) as well as the effects it would have on the spirit of the game.Baseball has a lot of steroid use. Thus, it saw the biggest excitement around new records. This is a false correlation. Nobody watches the sport just because its most impacted by performance-enhancing drugs. Otherwise everyone would watch WWE. 2,000 char limit

WC Debate - RR: Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for use in all major sports leagues I graciously accept Actionsspeak's concession. I greatly appreciate his willingness to debate this with me, and I think it's very big of him to concede, despite the fact that he made points that I felt were reasonable points of debate on this contentious subject. I hope that we will have another opportunity to debate in the future, but for now I honor his concession, and I urge voters to duly respect it by awarding him a conduct point in their votes.

Levels the playing field. Currently suspicion over drug use surrounds every sport and every success... Levels the playing field. Currently suspicion over drug use surrounds every sport and every successful athlete, and those competitors who don’t take performance-enhancing drugs see themselves as disadvantaged. Some drugs can’t be tested for, and in any case, new medical and chemical advances mean that the cheats will always be ahead of the testers. Legalisation would remove this uncertainty and allow everyone to compete openly and fairly.

Drug Use in Sports Responding to C1: Just because drugs like stimulant and muscle/hormone growth are common practices does not justify or prove that it is not harmful or promotes a good perception on how athletes should compete in sports. They have a negative effect on long-term health. Athletes would be proned to use those substances to relieve many stressors like pressure to perform, Physical pain, Injuries, And retirement for the sport. Growth hormone are banned by the WADA because it increases muscle mass and decrease adipose tissue. Athletes use those because of their anabolic effect on muscles. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Half of all recently surveyed athletes admitted they would be willing to take a drug even if it would kill them eventually. They would only focus or care about winning events and makes athletes feeling coerced to use those drugs in order to compete or win. Just because on average the athletes want to use these drugs or do use those drugs does not make it okay. For example (hypothetical) if on average or majority of people support slavery that does not make it okay or provide any proof of it "goodness. " The WADA, USADA, And I. O. C. All work collaboratively in sharing information to keep an eye on doping agents, Retains ownership of blood and urine samples, And work together efficiently to enhance testing effectiveness. Abusing drug to increase athletic abilities is definitely an unfair advantage. Not to mention the "blood doping" they use, It increases the risk for heart disease, Stroke, And blood clot in the brain or lungs because it boosts the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream. The other PEDs, Increase the risk for high blood pressure, An enlarged heart, Heart attack, Stroke, Irregular heart rate, High blood temperature, And paranoia. Moreover on C2: [USADA] --- Anabolic-steroids effects on health; - (physiological) liver damage, Premature closure of the growth centers of long bones (adolescents) which result in stunted growth, And disruption of puberty. - (psychological) increased aggressiveness and sexual desire. Sometimes resulting in abnormal sexual or criminal behavior. - (males) breast tissue development, Shrinking of the testicles, Impotence, And reducing sperm production. - (females) deep voice, Cessation of breast development, Growth of hair on face etc, Abnormal menstrual cycles. --- HGH (human growth hormones) - (physiological) hypertension, Blood cancers/leukemia, Anemia, Heart attacks, Thyroid problems, Severe headaches, Loss of vision, High blood pressure and heart failure, Tumors and diabetes. --- Stimulants - (physiological) insomnia, Anxiety, Dependence and addiction, Weight loss, Dehydration, Tremors, Increased heart rate and blood pressure, And increased risk of stroke and heart attack. --- Blood doping - (physiological) increased stress on the heart, Blood clotting, And stroke. Responding to C2: Yes the technology is very expensive and doesn't produce the same effects for performance as drugs. Again that does not justify or prove that it's healthy or promotes a "good" perception on athletes competing. You mostly use quotes, I don't really see how this one was an actual argument.

Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. " Did you not see what "allowed" refers to? Rights or not, steroids are not allowed in professional sports. " Again, you are ignoring your own statement at the beginning of the debate. You conceded the point about which meaning of "allowed" is to be used. " I didn't say that. Obviously, an athlete should be expected to be a role model for children, since many kids will look up to him/her. This does not dictate the way they live; it simply means they should not do stupid things, cheat, etc. because that will negatively influence kids. " You're contradicting yourself. The ability to do "stupid things" is part of the ability to choose how to live. Either you dictate how they live or you don't, there is no middle ground here. Respect their rights, or treat them as slaves. That's it. If you dictate that a person acts as a role model, this means you are dictating that they live as one. " Do you see any unconditioned professional athletes? " Yes, actually, in baseball for example, at some of the positions that are specialized, it is possible to just have a good technique down for pitching and hitting and not actually do much in the way of conditioning. Not optimal but some people do it with success. And you are ignoring the fact that being a professional athlete is a choice. They are free to be one or not to be one. So no, they don't HAVE TO do anything, even those whose sports do require conditioning, are not forced to choose that sport. " EXACTLY - one party still has to go through hard work, while the other can just take drugs. " Again that "Has to," which is false, and the false assumption that the first party can't use the drugs. And if you'll notice, exhbit A, the most successful steroid users also work the hardest (See Barry Bonds' extensive workouts.) The steroids simply allow the workout sessions to last longer and be more productive. " Well, first, if something is illegal for use in sports, then it is not allowed for use in sports. So I can relate these arguments to the resolution even if you were right. Second, you just contradicted yourself. First you state that I conceded that I was talking about what the law should allow. But then, you say I "explicitly clarified [it] as being allowable by the law, not allowable by the sports league". But really, I was laying the latter all along. The very first sentence says "illegal for use in sports". That means that their use is punishable by law if used in sports." You are twisting logic here, and it is you who contradict yourself. You state that i contradict myself by declaring you were talking about the law, and then declaring you were talking about the law? That is the opposite of a contradiction! Meanwhile you contradict yourself by stating you are talking about the sports league's rules, and then stating "PUNISHABLE BY LAW." "LAW" is not what a sports league makes. It is what congress makes. A sports league has every right to forbid participation based on such grounds as steroid use... but such a rule is not a "law," does not make participation "illegal." Only that which is forbidden by a government body, Congress, is "illegal." Unless you were trying to say I stated you were arguing it "Should be allowable by the law, not the sports league," which means you misinterpreted my statement. I stated the debate, you clarified, was about "What is allowable" by the law, rather than "what is allowable" the sports league, which means you are dropping the context and thus altering the meaning of my statement. Either way I have not contradicted myself, either you misunderstand the term contradiction or you are dropping the context of a statement (Your summary of my supposedly contradictory arguments was so ambigous I have a hard time telling which.) " Now before you start saying that we should not jail people for steroid use, that's not what "punishable by law" means. Loitering is punishable by law; do you get thrown in jail for it? What about littering or violating curfew laws? " You are given fines, which if not paid result in jail. The end that lies down the road is the same, there are simply more steps. The point is that the penalty is government administered, and active, as opposed to the passive penalty of being refused employment if the prohibition were private. Jail and government-mandated fines are morally equivalent. Where one is morally unjustified, so is the other. " My opponent has spent all of his arguments attempting to not relate my arguments to the resolution. However, I have showed how he has misinterpreted all of my arguments." And I have shown how you have misinterpreted mine, and thereby not shown how I have misinterpreted yours. "urthermore, he has not attempted to argue with my position," Your explicit position, explicated in Round 1, is that it should be, again, ILLEGAL for athletes to use steroids. Not, grounds for a private entity to not hire, but, ILLEGAL. If you think I haven't been arguing with that position, you haven't paid the slightest bit of attention. "nd is giving contradictory and misleading "reasons" on why I have "not" supported the resolution. " I already demonstrated I have not contradicted myself. I hope you can do the same. It isn't my fault what you chose to open the debate with, had you not, the meaning of "allowed" would still be open to discussion, but your inclusion of the term "illegal" made certain it is not, and you have not responded to my arguments against it being illegal (or, since i am Pro, in favor of it being legal, though there is no difference between the two terms).

Drug Use in Sports Drug use in sports poses a negative effect on the user's health. Enacting the legalization of drug use in sports seeks an unfair advantage towards other athletes and sets a bad perception on how athletes should compete in sports. Drugs I am talking about are: stimulants, Anabolic-androgenic steroids, Erythropoietin, And 'blood doping' (practice of increasing the number of red blood cells in one's circulatory system). But I'm open to HGH (human growth hormone) ONLY if it is prescribed to them and they do not use it with anabolic steroids or testosterone.

Steroids Should Be Legal in Professional Sports 1a. Injuries occurred in sports are risks to your health. Steroids are also risks to your health. Therefore steroid use is acceptable. Players avoid injuries. Steroid use is intentional. Therefore you should avoid injuries and steroids for the health risks. 1b. Banning steroids for aesthetic reasons should not be a problem since we all choose to look a certain way. It is just a side effect of a harmful substance - no one chooses to use steroids just for shrunken testicles and acne unless they're insane. Also, it is illegally altering your body composition. 1c. No evidence shows that steroid use has mental side-effects. Ever heard of "roid rage"? " "Anabolic steroid use is linked not only to roid rage and sudden mood changes, but also to a higher incidence of suicide than in the general populace." [1] 1d. Steroids only complement existing skill and will put everyone on a level playing field. Steroids allow unnatural muscular development. It can complement existing skill and it can also allow somebody with lesser skill a greater physical advantage due to his increased muscular development. There are different kinds of steroids, not everyone will have the same ones, and those with the "cutting edge" ones will have the greatest advantage. 2a. My point is that the best, most cutting-edge technology is a part of human achievement. Breaking records by having an altered body composition is not human achievement, it's an achievement made by a human with superhuman alterations. This is not the point of competing in sports. 3.a “Baseball was always the sport most impacted by performance-enhancing drugs. Thus, it saw the biggest excitement around new records.” And your response to my claim that it was a false correlation: “It is not a false correlation at all. There may not be much interest in the WWE, but that can be for other reasons.”I used the WWE as an example of how you falsely correlated interest with steroid use.char limit SOURCE: http://www.wisegeek.org...;[1]

Anabolic steroids should not be allowed for use in professional sports. Said drugs should not be used in sports, for a few reasons. 1) Negative effect on the steroid user Steroids, as we all know, speed up protein synthesis to enhance performance. However, there are some harmful side effects to using them. They include: - higher blood pressure - higher cholesterol levels - higher risk of heart disease - liver damage - premature growth - testicular cancer - abnormally large amounts of acne - breast development in men This, obviously, is not good for the steroid user. Furthermore, exercising normally can avoid these problems, and regular exercise is better for physical and mental health. 2) Negative impact on children When children start to get into sports, they normally treat their favorite player as an idol, an image of what they want to be when they grow up. How would they feel if their idol essentially cheated by using drugs so they didn't have to work as hard? Furthermore, what if they decided to use steroids too, because their hero did? 3) Unfair advantage Most professional athletes work hard every day to stay in shape and sharp at their sport. Why should some players get to skip this hard work that everyone else is doing? That's all for now.

Resolved: In the United States, steroid usage should be permitted for all sports. Contention 1: All athletes can use steroids if they choose to First of all there have been no notable athletes that you can think of off of the top of your head that have had shown any undesirable affects of steroids on the playing field. Steroids have contributed to sports nothing but production. Also it is no secret that steroids already are a part of sports, for example in 2002 Ken Caminiti posted an article that said "It is no secret what is happening in baseball, at least half the guys are using steroids. They joke about it with eachother. And the side affects of steroids are very much exaggerated, the death rates of playing college and professional football are 50 to 100 times higher than even the wild exaggerations about steroids. More people have died playing Baseball than using steroids. (1) Contention 2: Athletes do not have to tell anyone of they are taking steroids If an athlete takes steroids he is not trying to tell a kid or teenager that idols him that it is OK or that he should do it all that athlete is doing is being human. And to be a human is to be better, or at least try to be better. The whole point of professional sports, or sports at any level, college, high school, etc is for entertainment and isn't it more entertaining to watch a sport that is more entertaining. The definition of a professional athlete is an athlete who is the best in the world at the sport they do and in ounce again in order to make the sport more entertaining athletes should be able to enhance there abilities with the usage of steroids.

Doping should be allowed Thank you for showing your point of view in a clear understandable way. First of all, The main objective of sports is to provide better health or to keep it and I think the whole concept of doping is against that. And these athletes that participate in the olimpics or in big competitions are pretty much the representatives of sports. So if they start getting unhealthy and taking substances that aren't good for the body,it will not transmit a motivational image for the so called 'normal' people. Another important point is that if everyone doped obviously the rich countries would have a greater advantage since they have more money and technology to develop innovative substances that will produce better and quicker effects. And that would destroy the whole meaning of competing as an athlete because it wouldn't be the one who trained the most and has the greatest mentality who would win but only the ones with the most efficient substances in their body. It wouldn't be a competition between humans but between puppets under the effects of drugs. And finally, what about those countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea or Kenia? they have nothing, no economy, corruption, their people starve, but their moment to shine is competitons like the olympics where they completely wipe it out in the marathon or other long distance runs. And that gives those countries popularity and more attention from all parts of the world. Now if dopping would, in fact, be allowed to everyone, they would have no money or technology and innovation to create the same substances as developed and rich countries such as Russia or the USA. And what about the athletes? Is there any glory or self realization when a medal is won, not by the self's effort but by some external input? Medals wouldn't mean a thing. At the end, high competiton sports would only be another huge way of making profit and entertaining people.

If legal then drugs can be controlled and monitored by doctors, making them much safer. Athletes on... Reform is preferable to surrender. The current testing regime is not perfect but better research, testing and funding, plus sanctions against uncooperative countries and sports could greatly improve the fight against drugs in sport.

permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports Protecting young and vulnerable athletes

Better spectacle for spectators. Sport has become a branch of the entertainment business and the pu... Better spectacle for spectators. Sport has become a branch of the entertainment business and the public demands “higher, faster, stronger” from athletes. If drug-use allows world records to be continually broken, and makes American Football players bigger and more exciting to watch, why deny the public what they want, especially if the athletes want to give it to them?

Anabolic Steroids Should be Legalized for Professional Athletes Sports are not about the practices. If they were, then they would be televised a lot more. What matters are the games. Those are what everyone wants to see. If a professional athlete took the right amounts of the right kinds of steroids, then his game performance would be better and the team would do better. If I were a coach, I would allow my players to do just that so we could beat the other team.

Legalize Performance-Enhancing Drug for Sportman Consisten? You're pro in this topic. so you agree to legalize PED. But ur argument ask to make PEDs remain illegal for sportman.

Statistics, Performance Enhancing Drugs, and Major League Baseball. "Many players will use whatever they BELIEVE to help, even if it is minimal." Well, at least we acknowledge that the effects exist. "I have questioned how much this muscle mass and strength helps baseball players, specifically." It allows them to have longer workouts with less required effort. This in turn leads to an increase in the strength of any muscle in the human body. A baseball player who uses steroids allows himself to attain physical greatness more easily than a moral player. "If the side effects of steroids eventually resulted in a decrease in performance..." The side effects aren't impacting their performance. The side effects just impact the rest of their life. Steroids lead to a better MLB career, but it makes the rest of life worse. Therefore, it still is an increase in performance, but players eventually decide that it isn't worth it, so they quit steroids, and therefore quit baseball. "So they barely got better. That's my point." No, they got better. But it was at an expense that they weren't willing to continue to pay. "No–the increased muscle mass is largely located in the 'thorax, neck, shoulders and upper arm.'" "Largely"? That means that increased muscle mass is also located elsewhere, such as the core-abs. "...you have not provided any extra argument here why batters should use them." They can use them to strengthen their core-abs, and they can use them to have easier workouts. "You have not shown why." Clarification above. "I don't know what you're trying to say here...." I'm restating your "level playing field" hypothesis. "To this, I would say that you have not shown evidence of any supposed increase, and even if there were an increase, it would support my balanced playing field argument." Any increase wouldn't appear because of the balanced playing field argument. However, I can attack your balanced playing field argument from a different, moral standpoint. "Straw man. This is completely irrelevant. We are arguing about the validity of statistics." Letting everybody become famous for illegal statistics makes more people want to use PEDs, which makes the people who originally chose not to use PEDs have to use PEDs in order to keep up, which in turn gives them undesired side effects [1]. "If we condone some players taking steroids, that puts pressure on other players to do the same if they want to be competitive. No one should have to risk his health in that way to play in MLB." "You have not shown why that puts them at a disadvantage–in fact, you seem to have argued that it would put them at an advantage, due to the numerous side effects." Again, the side effects do not affect performance. They affect the rest of the player's life. And even if most players use PEDs, we should just throw them out, rather than force the only remaining moral people to turn to the dark side. "This is not a rewording. You are operating under the assumption that players who used steroids expected massive gain, when it is clear that many athletes would do anything to gain any sort of edge, no matter how small." They were expecting a significant gain, which doesn't imply a massive gain. "No, they do not necessarily expect a significant effect. You have not shown that." Well, that's the only reason they'd take the PEDs. "Statistics are meant to accurately show who played well and who did not. We who use statistics for this purpose are not concerned with the morality of throwing out certain stats just to punish players, because that distorts the truth, that distorts what actually happened." However, if a player broke the rules to attain such statistics, then should they really be glorified for it? If you know that a student cheated, should you grade his test as normal, or should you throw it out and give him a zero? They are illegitimate, just as the student's test was illegitimate. Here's an argument against putting PED-using players in the Hall of Fame, which can be extended to allowing their statistics to be considered legitimate [2]: "It is because if they were that good, they would not have had to cheat and if they could have made it into the Hall of Fame without cheating, then they really blew it, but to congratulate these players for cheating is preposterous." "PED users don't always win because basically everyone's a PED user. That's the point." You assume this at the expense of the few MLB players out there who don't use PEDs, who continue to keep up what little integrity there is left in the once-great game of baseball. Harsh. "My opponent has not really provided evidence for why a PED user would necessarily benefit in terms of his baseball skills." It increases general muscle strength and allows for easier workouts. "Many of his arguments seem to prove my point, especially the ones about the negative effects of steroids–in these, he seems to show that the statistics of PED users were adversely affected, which would make it absolutely absurd to throw them out due to artificial inflation." He thinks that the side effects affected their performance. However, that's the only part where the steroids had a positive effect. "Some of his other arguments don't really seem to make much sense, and hopefully he'll expand on them in the next round." What, the benefit of the doubt? Clarifications above. Because the word "legitimate" appears in the resolution, I think that it's about time we gave it a definition [3]: Legitimate - conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards Well, this makes it a no-brainer. The PED users did not conform to the accepted anti-PED rules. Thus, they were illegitimate, and their statistics are therefore illegitimate. The resolution is negated. With all of that aside, I eagerly await my opponent's response, as well. Vote CON. 1. http://www.sports-central.org... 2. http://bleacherreport.com...

As an international sporting committee we would lift the doping ban Let me get this straight. I'm not pushing for this because we are giving up on trying to ban drugs. I believe in this because i don't see why we should continue to put so much effort in something which can be get rid off. That's where you've got this wrong. You think we are "giving up" on law enforcement. Where exactly do you draw the line between something natural and something unnatural? The comment you made about breaking records. Hello. Wake up. Today even sports attire which is engineered with aerodynamics etc gives athletes seconds of time ahead from athletes of previous generation. We should look into that since you clearly think that's "unnatural". I apologise that I have to conclude early because I am actually away from home and am typing this on mobile. I invite my opponent to use only 1000 chars because that's what I'm doing here. It is up to him whether he wants to or not.

As an international sporting committee we would lift the doping ban My opponent started with "What kind of message would we be sending our children if we allowed doping". To me, this is entirely subjective. What kind of message would we be sending if we allowed guns on the streets? If we banned marijuana but allow smoking? If we spied on people to prevent terrorism? "A young boy with dreams of becoming a professional athlete would feel he has to use drugs in order to compete and pursue his dreams." It really depends on the level of competition. If it was an amateur competition and most people join for the satisfaction and fun of it then there is nothing wrong with allowing contestants to take drugs or not since the main motivation for these people is not to win, but to challenge themselves. At the highest levels, where athletes already receive a lot of funding from governments and sponsors, there is nothing wrong with allowing them to take drugs AS LONG AS everyone is allowed to, openly and without secrets. "And you can't compare a special swimming suit or an oxygen tank to a chemical that has negative side effects on an athletes body." If you have an issue against chemicals, I suggest you wake up. We are surrounded by carcinogens on a daily basis which we use to improve ourselves. Deodorants, anti-pesticides for vegetables, injections on poultry to become fatter produce more eggs to feed an every increasing population. "We should encourage our athletes to be as healthy as possible." It is up to them whether or not they choose to take in extremely harmful substances. As long as it is an act of free choice, surely they have a right to consume what they want. Here, I would also like to highlight that these drugs are seldom extremely dangerous substances. With correct application and suitable doses, they can be used in a healthy manner to stimulate the muscles and organs. If athletes fail to follow the prescription, it's just like an obese person who chooses to consume too much foods. My opponent also never rebutted my arguments.

Steroids should be legalized in sports. I guess you are giving me BoP then? That seems quite ridiculous to me, to be honest, since changing a basis rule of sports would give you BoP I would think, but I'll go with it. I will provide a simple argument for now.Sports are supposed to be a judge of someone's athletic prowess. That is, how much they practice and how much of an affinity they have for the sport. If external enhancements like steroids are allowed, this falls apart. What's the point, then? People will just try to use the newest and best drugs, and competitions would have little meaning beyond who screwed up their body more to win. That is obviously not the point of sports.

As an international sporting committee we would lift the doping ban Short debate with 2000 characters max. The nominated judges are: Romanii, tejretics, Mikal and airmax1227 Please only accept this debate if you intend on seeing it through. Do not forfeit rounds. Doping ban: Currently, athletes in professional sports are tested periodically and randomly to check if they have taken banned substances which can boost their performance hence allowing them to have an unfair advantage. Guilty athletes may be banned from future events and/or stripped off previous achievements. We would dissolve this ruling, hence all athletes will be allowed to use whatever substances they want to prior to competing. FIRST ROUND IS ACCEPTANCE. Looking forward to a good debate. Thank you!

Steroids Should Be Legal in Professional Sports 1. Sports already have health risks that one needs to accept to be willing to play. One only needs to look at the recent focus on concussions in football. The physical side-effects that you mentioned are just that- physical. It is someone's choice to look a certain way. Thus, I do not see why a sports league should ban a substance for aesthetic reasons. If the mental side-effects that you mentioned were true, why would we not see a disproportionate number of athletes on steroids arrested for violent crimes. Also, this is not teaching kids to "abandon the values of fair play", as steroids only complement natural skill. If an average man decided to take steroids, he could not hit 762 home runs in the MLB (as Barry Bonds did). Thus, the legalization of steroids would actually help to put everyone on an equal playing field.2. Your argument seems to be that broken records are less impressive when one knows that steroids played a part. However, you do think that it is impressive that someone lived to 122 with modern technology. Let me ask you this: If we develop anti-aging technology and someone lives to 500, is that impressive or the equivalent of steroids? My point is that the best, most cutting-edge technology is a part of human achievement. If we did not accept that, then we would still be living in the way that the early cave men did thousands of years ago.3. It is not a false correlation at all. There may not be much interest in the WWE, but that can be for other reasons. For example, the idea of a scripted sport appals many. Just look at the Nielsen ratings. Per Spotted Ratings, the 2004 World Series had 216% the demo audience of the average TV show in the 2004-05 season. Most recently, the 2012 World Series only had 170% of the average show in the 2012-13 season. This came while the other sports have been rising relative to the average TV show. The NBA Finals and the Super Bowl have grown from 127% and 817%, respectively, in 2004-05 to 329% and 1884% this year.