Should performance-enhancing drugs be made legal in the athletic field?

 Should performance-enhancing drugs be made legal in the athletic field? 
1. Introduction The painstaking and aggressive nature of sports of our time and society’s ceaseless demands for excellence resulted in athletes to seek performance-enhancing drugs to synthetically improve their capability and widen their competitive advantage. However, several organizations in sports banned the use of these drugs and established a testing program penalizing athletes being caught using these substances. The uses of performance enhancing drugs are not easy to monitor or prevent since not all of these drugs are illegal. Others believe that helpful substances like these that improve performance and help athlete to gain advantage over their opponent should be legalized in sports. In the war against performance enhancing drugs in sports, the lines of legality and fairness are increasingly blurred. Therefore, we should give light and answer the question: should performanceenhancing drugs be made legal in the athletic field? 2. Doping and Performance-Enhancing Drugs In the athletic field or sports, the word dope was first used to describe the unlawful drugging of racehorses in the 20th century (Mehlman 2005, p.1). It is a deliberate application of chemical substances to alter performance (Fricker, 2000, p.76). Drugs and other means to enhance performance are not new and as reported, stimulants such as strychnine were used by the Greek gladiators to increase their fighting ability. Coca plants were used by the Incas to increase attentiveness and stamina of their soldiers (McCloskey et.al. 2005, p.81). For athletes, the ancient Egyptians were reported using powdered rear hooves of an Abyssinian ass combined with rose petals to give them super human power and early Olympians even went as far as swallowing sheep testicles just to improve their abilities (Stewart, 1998, p.8). The medical or scientific development of anabolic steroids actually began in Paris in 1889. It was initiated by Charles Edouard Brown-Sequard, a well-known physiologist and neurologist who addressed the Society of Biology and reported that he had self-administered ten subcutaneous injections that contained combinations of dog’s blood from testicular veins, semen, and juice extracted from a testicle. He claimed that his experiment brought him significant improvements in physical and mental energy for a month. Most experts in the following years agrees with Sequard’s hormonal replacements and various medical laboratories in the Unites States and Europe began producing testicular extracts for rejuvenation and to treat wide variety of sickness (Yesalis and Bahrke, 2005, p.434-436). Recreational drugs like Cannabinoids is not included in the UK’s 2007 Prohibited list since its use is in social context and not considered as performance-enhancing drug (UK Sport, International Standard for Prohibited List, 2007). 3. Application of Performance-Enhancing Drugs Today, there are several of ways of doping being used by athletes, one of them but less popular is homologous hemoglobin or blood doping. Anabolic steroids and human growth hormone treatment is probably the most popular. It helps athletes not only to improve their performance but also to enhance their skeletal muscles (NIDA, 2005, p.1). Stimulants on the other hand as many of us are familiar with, can augment cognitive functions and controls fatigue (Mehlman 2005, p.1). Back in 1996, study shows that men who used steroids for ten weeks gain 13 pounds of muscle and can bench press an additional 48 pounds (McCloskey, 2005, p.67). Steroid seems to be common in athletes and patients in this day and age considering the fact that during the 1984 Olympic game in Los Angeles, 70 doctors were found to have prescribed steroids to at least 20 winning athletes. Moreover, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, one million high school athletes are using steroids (McCloskey et. al., 2005, p.8). In general, anabolic steroids are widely accepted and being use for medical care. It has been used to treat various medical problems such as breast cancer, reproduction disorder, trauma, anaemia, and even AIDS (McCloskey et.al, 2005, p.84). Another universally known type of natural supplement is the Human Growth Hormone. The hormone is naturally concealed by the body and provides growth to roughly all organ and tissue of the body. There is no known drug test that can successfully spot HGH and as a result, it is now the preferred choice among athletes (Taxin, 2004, p.834). Adolescence use drugs like some of the athletes because they want to imitate them (McCloskey et.al., 2005, p.55). Three groups of athletes use anabolic steroids: those who wish to be stronger, those who want a trimmed body mass, and those who crave for speed. Baseball was reported to have some of the highest drug use in athletics. About 80% of the Major League Baseball players are using steroids. Drug testing and efforts to thwart athletes using steroids hav