Many athletes are using steroids today to enhance their performance, strength, and size. Many of these athletes do not realize the side effects of using steroids, and they tend to overlook the consequence of using steroids. Steroids should be banned in sports because of their negative effects, their creation of unfair advantages for the users, and their distorted message to young athletes. The use of steroids affects both men and women in a very negative way physically, psychologically, and emotionally .Steroids come with serious physical side effects; men may develop liver cancer, baldness, shrunken testicles, infertility, and impotence while women may develop a deeper voice, increased body hair, baldness and infrequent or absent periods (mayoclinic.com). The use of steroids may also cause aggressiveness, violence, and increased sexual desire as well as sleeping disorders, anxiety, depression, and hallucinations (sportsci.org).with all these negative effects in mind, steroids should be banned in sports .In order to discourage athletes from using steroids, "testing and penalties should be done more frequently, and harsher penalties should be applied to steroids users" (Dillingham 233).
Steroids also create an unfair advantage to the athletes that use them. According to David Fairchild, PhD, Professor Emeritus of philosophy at the Indiana University "The use of performance enhancers is cheating because it violates the constitutive rule of the activity ", and it makes it unfair to other athletes that do not use steroids (procon.org ).Many records have been surpassed by athletes that use steroids. Kate Schmidt, who did not use steroids, established American and world records in the javelin throw, but her "record was surpassed by an East German who participated in a program famous for pharmacological enhancement"" (235).This is absolutely unfair and unethical.
More than three fourth of young U.
