While the use of drugs within sports is a growing controversial debate, the use of performance-enhancing drugs by professional athletes has been acknowledged as a problem since the early 1960's. (Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports) Multiple major health risks follow the uses of performance enhancement drugs. The prohibition of drugs within sports would serve as an all around benefit to an athlete's lifelong mental and physical health. Sports doping prohibition would positively affect the ways in which professional athletes are role modeling the younger generation of athletes. Role modeling would not only benefit today's generation of professional athletes but the future athletes as well. The prohibition of the use of drugs within sports would provide a fair playing field to all athletes. The use of drugs within sports should be prohibited because of the health risks, as well as role modeling and righteousness of the sport. .
First and foremost, the uses of drugs within sports have been proven to be composed of harmful effects on an athletes overall health. Performance enhancers such as steroids, growth hormones and other forms of supplements used in sports doping will have a positive short-term beneficial reward. However, they will follow with a lifelong of negative effects on the human body and mind. For example, according to The World Anti-Doping Code in Sports, scholars have concluded, "Drugs such as anabolic steroids are associated with aggression, hypertension, impotence, and infertility. Abuse of growth hormones can result in acromegaly and an increased risk of cancer. Use of erythropoietin for sports purposes increases the risk of hypertension, thrombus formation, and thromboembolic events." (Huges, David 170) These are only a few of the negative affects performance enhancing drugs are capable of causing. These enhancements not only have major health risks yet are often followed by mental health issues.
