Professional athletes often use performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and/or steroids.  These substances improve physical performance for a short period of time.  These drugs can also help a person’s body to recover quicker.  Athletes depend on their body to make money and so to keep their jobs and to make the most money possible, a lot of pros will use these substances to stay in the game and to be really good at it. The problem with steroids is that they are very illegal in professional sports.  But the pros know what the risks are, so why not just go ahead a let them use all the steroids they want?

Pro athlete’s livelihood depends on their bodies, so if their bodies break down they’re going to want to heal as soon as possible.  Take Ray Lewis for example, he tore his triceps and was back in the game just three months later.  “… Ray Lewis seeking treatment for his torn triceps… prescribed Lewis, among other things,  the company’s “Ultimate spray” a deer antler extract that contains IGF-1” (Petchesky).  IGF-1 is a hormone that stimulates muscle growth.  It is similar to HGH (human growth hormone).  Ray Lewis didn’t get in trouble though.  Probably because he’s Ray Lewis and the NFL isn’t as strict as other leagues about PEDs.

Other pro athletes take illegal substances to gain an advantage on other athletes or just to be at the top of their game.  Barry Bonds who played for the Pirates and then the Giants took steroids in his goal to break the single season homerun record.  “Bonds used HGH, an undetectable steroid” (Iainaru-Wasa and Williams Game of Shadows)

The biggest argument against steroids is that they have very harmful effects on a person’s body.  Effects include, “severe acne, hair loss, liver disease, kidney disease, heart disease, and altered mood like irritability and increased aggression.” There are many other effects that adversely affect a person’s body.  The increased aggression is often known as roid rage.  Many people would want to see illegal substances restricted more and penalties for getting caught harsher.  I see their point; it’s not worth ruining your body for temporary gain. 

I think that professional sports leagues such as the MLB, NFL, and NBA etc. should either just make steroids and other substances legal which will never happen, or just make penalties for getting caught much more severe.  Make the fines more expensive, suspensions longer and without pay, and also to punish the team.  This would give players more incentive to follow the rules. 

In conclusion I just want to see every pro athlete doing the same thing.  If that means that everyone is on steroids then that’s that.  Or in a more likely scenario, everyone is just doing what they’re supposed to and staying clean.  I personally think that substances make games more entertaining from a spectator standpoint.  Baseball is a lot more fun to watch when people are hitting homeruns rather than pop flys.  In reality people will always cheat.  It’s just going to happen.  So the solution in my mind is to just enforce the existing rules to a further extreme.