Article Summaries for Essay 4

Sports and Drugs

This is an extremely long article because it touches on every possible thing that ties in with steroids and just the overall use of performance enhancing drugs. There is a certain part of the article that really got my attention. Cracking Down on Steroids is the subtitle. This part of the article shows all the major sports leagues the NCAA and how they have a list of the penalties and consequences that they came up with in case they catch someone using steroids after being tested. For example, in the MLB, they have unannounced testing of all players once during the season, with a follow-up test 5 to 7 days later. After the first positive test - they penalize the player by putting them in a drug-treatment program. After the second, they get a fifteen day suspension or up to a $10,000 fine. This goes on and they other leagues have similar penalties.

Poll: Economy bigger problem for MLB

This article is all based on the statistics they use. They show stats like more than 80% of people who follow sports believe the baseball players are currently using steroids and other human growth hormone. Also, the same percent believe that the economy is a bigger problem for baseball than steroids. The famous stars that are caught up in all of this steroids are Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens. The poll shows that more than 75% said that players that use or used steroids should be allowed to continue playing. These are just some of the statistics in the article.

High school testing loses momentum

This article shows us how high school testing began when George W. Bush addressed this topic in his 2004 State of the Union address. He said that Americans needed "to get tough and to get rid of steroids now". It has not been a great success in these four to five years. A good example is Florida who gave up it's $100,000 program after finding one positive case out of 600 tests. Now only Texas, Illinois and New Jersey have random-testing programs and even they haven't had much success. The average is 1 positive test out of 500 tests and these tests don't come cheap. They come out to about $150 to $200. Texas is feeling the hit because their program has a $3 million annual price tag. Still these states are going strong and they are committed to getting rid of steroids in their high schools.

Statement about articles: My statement about these articles is that they all show one important message to their readers. The message is that steroids is a problem that can escalate into a crisis if its not stopped soon. These articles show steroids in baseball and high school. These leagues or programs have had the biggest problems with steroids which is why they are important when you are talking about steroids. My view on this subject is that taking steroids should be allowed to just people but when you are in the MLB, high school or any league in this case and they don't allow steroids, then I totally agree something should be done about it. This is just like cheating and it makes the game unfair to the people that don't take steroids.