Should We Legalize Performance-Enhancing Drugs In Tennis-Sports?

In the last 25 years the challenges presented by performance enhancing drugs in sports and the inadequacy of the drug testing agencies to deal with it, has come to a point that even high ranked officials are venting their frustration.

"There's definitely a performance-enhancing effect if you use things that improve oxygen transport to the tissue," says Larry Bowers, an expert on athletic drug testing and senior managing director of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He says anonymous surveys of athletes indicate that only a tenth of them use performance-enhancing drugs. But he acknowledges that doped Athletes may win most of the time."

"Charles Yesalis, an epidemiology professor at Pennsylvania State University who has written extensively on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport over the past 23 years, believes a "large percentage" of record-holders probably doped their way to the finish line. "A lot of experts, at least in private, feel that way," he says."

"Yesalis maintains that drug testing, as practiced at past games, has been a "farce." "Just because of my own value system, I have never seriously entertained legalizing drugs," says Yesalis. "But the stench of the hypocrisy is starting to outweigh my hesitation to just throw up my hands and say, 'Let everybody do whatever they want.'" Performance Drugs Outrun The Olympics - Matthew Herper, 02.15.02, 12:00 PM ET Forbes.com

As Charles Yesalis, of the US. Anti-Doping Agency, I feel like saying "'Let everybody do whatever they want.'", but perhaps it would be the wrong signal, so let us analyse, what might happen if performance-enhancing drugs were legalized for professional athletes:

- Young people would get the wrong message.

- Our general anti drugs laws would not make any sense because; athletes are users and abusers of illegal drugs such as;

Amphetamines, Diuretics, Growth hormone, Anabolic Steroids, Cocaine, Coca leaf juice, Cannabis even Monkey Brains and G.O.R.K. (God Only Really Knows)!

- All drugs would have to be legalized!

- We would have a quarter of the world taking speed, a quarter smoking cannabis another quarter snorting cocaine and the rest wondering what to take to look "Normal"! Kidding apart it would be a catastrophe! Or would it be?

- The already existing sports fanatics and wanabe champion dysfunctional and destitute of any talent would start taking drugs

in the hope it would work for them! (Even though it would not work, because you still need to be a pure bread/great athlete

to win.)

- Greedy parents would start pumping their children with all kinds of terrible things. (How naive am I, as if they were not

doing it now?)

- High school coaches of all sports would have a heyday!

"A 2005 survey of high school students across the country by the national Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 4.8 percent had used steroids without a doctor's prescription.

Not that anyone needs a doctor. A 2005 study by monitoring the Future, a federally funded research organization, found that nearly 40 percent of high school seniors said steroids were "fairly easy" or "very easy" to acquire." Impact of steroids felt across high school sports C.W. Nevius Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - San Francisco Chronicle

So if; At the Sydney Games, out of almost 3000 athletes tested, some 80 per cent of them admitted to taking at least one ‘legal’ drug or supplement. Over 500 admitted to taking more than five. It is clear that the ‘medicalisation’ of human performance, at least at the Olympics, means that sport could not, ironically, exist without drugs whether they are ‘legal’ or not." Drugs in sport - a bitter pill to swallow Fri, Dec 8, 06 16:15

''No one wants to see me put the shot 65 feet or throw the discus 200 feet, and the only way I can make a big throw is to use steroids.'' He said the competition would still be legitimate because he said 80 percent to 90 percent of the athletes he would face were using steroids. VIEWS OF SPORT; Liberate Track and Field From Steroids VIEWS OF SPORT; By EDWIN MOSES

Nicolas Escude former ATP player (Career High ATP Ranking - Singles: 17 (26-Jun-2000) at the French open 2002. In Paris, French Davis Cup player Escude said: "To say that tennis today is clean, you have to be living in a dream world." By Piers Newbery - BBC Sport Online at Wimbledon Friday, 28 June, 2002, 17:05 GMT 18:05 UK

Now the case for making it legal for professional athletes to take drugs:

- If the estimate is that around the 80% of the Athletes use some sort of performance enhancing substance, there is a strong case for legalization!

- Performance enhancing drugs should be legal for professional athletes only and above the age of 18 years old.

- Laws should be made to protect non-professional athletes and youngsters - No Tolerance on use or abuse.

- No tolerance for the use of performance enhancing drugs for non-professional until the age of 18 years old!

- Doctors and Medicine Sports Centres should be responsible for the Athletes medication.

- The Athletes and Doctors and labs should take full responsibility for their own decisions.

- Coaches should stay completely out of the equation, the professionals on the field; Doctors, Scientists and Labs should be the only ones making decisions with the Athletes.

There are a lot more issues, but to make this article shorter we have to understand that, the general public is well aware of what is going on and so do officials, sponsors and governments. There is too much money involved, billions and billions of dollars; we are no longer in the "Pierre de Coubertin" era. It is time for a change and everyone will feel better with the situation, the IOC, the governing bodies, the testing sites and the Athletes themselves.

Why are we then continuing this charade? Keeping on saying that our sports are clean when in any given Olympic games more than 8O% of the Athletes are "sick" or asthmatic, or have liver, heart or lung problems in order to be prescribed "legal" (Illegal) drugs and compete! And when almost every week there is a report about drug use by professional Athletes!

Remember in my last article; - "SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- John McEnroe has reportedly admitted he unknowingly took steroids during his tennis career.

"For six years I was unaware I was being given a form of steroid of the legal kind they used to give horses until they decided it was too strong even for horses," McEnroe was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney on Monday." [http://www.cnn.com/2004/SPORT/01/11/mcenroe.steroids.ap/] - CNN WORLD SPORTS Sunday, January 11, 2004 Posted: 8:52 PM EST (0152 GMT)

...and the ATP, the ITF and whoever else tests the players did not detect "HORSE DOSES of Steroids" in John McEnroe's urine or blood tests? Definitely, "They cannot be serious!"

"In his book ''You Cannot Be Serious'', McEnroe said he suspected that steroids and amphetamines had made their way into the top levels of the sport in the 80's. " Why were steroids or amphetamines not detected on other players either, that is if players were tested at all?

The excuse, "the tennis authorities were testing for recreational drugs only", oh!...and cocaine apparently stays in your body for the rest of your life in the roots of your hair. How come cocaine was never detected in any of the possible suspected culprits in the Tennis Tour then? Or is this a case of the whole world being "stupid" and these organizations know better?

We could go on and on citing more and more questionable actions by officialdom to no avail. The crux of all of this is; "Should we legalize performance-enhancing drugs in tennis/sports?" As much as I hate to say it, to bring this absurd hypocritical charade to an end, my answer is a redundant yes!

Your opinion is very much appreciated, please go to my website and vote, yes or no, the results will be there for everyone to see.

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