Performance Enhancing Drugs have been at the forefront of many sports related debates in the past few decades. In this piece, Elena Saavedra advocates for the legalization of PEDs for professional athletes (contrary to her existing opinion), detailing the economic and health regulation related benefits.
Professional sporting events have become a money making machine, sparking a billion dollar industry. To maintain this industry, teams will go to extreme lengths to entertain customers and develop a brand revolving around exceptionally talented athletes. Partly owing to this, athletes feel pressure to perform with unhuman-like abilities, turning to drugs and other performance enhancing mechanisms. Although these are currently outlawed by the major sports leagues, who is to say the athletic achievement can be limited by the governing board of a given professional sports association?
Some can argue that we have a moral obligation to not let athletes destroy their bodies with Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) and that this type of behavior would not be tolerated in modern society. Yet in recent history, there does not seem to be a clear line where people take issue with athletes using PEDs so long as the physical deformities are not deemed unappealing to the eye. But to this point, distortion of athlete bodies has already happened and has been accepted in society. Fans do not seem to care that the athletes are using PEDs as long as the entertainment value is still there and there aren’t blatant physical traits that are disrupting the performance of the player. Although their bodies may be deformed or unnatural looking, society assumes that they have the body composition fit for their position, distancing the fact that PEDs may be causing the deformities.
So then, if the audience generally doesn’t care and athletes using said drugs are indifferent, why should major companies care as they are the ones reaping the monetary benefits for these endeavors? In all honesty, they shouldn’t. There is no reason have PEDs be illegal looking strictly from a monetary and societal acceptance standpoint.
Yet, issues of this magnitude are not so simple, as the human condition and fixity of human ethics stand in the way of exploiting others for personal entertainment. The audience dictates what kind of content is acceptable for the television stations to run and sports teams to put on the field. If it’s proven that fans do not care what the athletes look like and focus solely on performance, then there is no incentive for the companies involved to care about athletes well being besides their own moral compass, which is hardly measurable in the current scope of athletic competition.
Given this, where does the moral line of caring about athletes well-being come into play? When these types are drugs are legalized for professional use, regulating PEDs via team doctors and certified outside sources would reduce the risks involved in taking high volumes of these drugs and sponsor a higher baseline of competition. The health and safety of athletes would be closely monitored under professional doctors who have the knowledge to administer healthy yet effective doses of these drugs and can make sure that athletes are not poisoning their bodies. This would provide a safer landscape for athletes to be regulated and understand the health risks involved with taking PEDs, rather than sneaking them and ignoring health concerns. Through this, legalization of PEDs would allow for safer procedures and management of athlete health risks and usage of these drugs, providing a more even playing field for the betterment of sports.
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