Portfolio: Essay 4

I choose to write about the subject of steroids in sports because I am extremely interested in sports and when something like steroids gets involved with sports, I like to know about it. Steroids are a certain drug that causes growth in a human being hormone when it is taken. That’s why they are sometimes called HGH or human growth hormone. They are illegal to high school students and players that are involved in any professional sports organization that does not allow their players to take steroids. Yet both students and players have broken the rules now and in the past. This is where we get the problem of steroids in sports.

Using steroids on any professional or nonprofessional sports organization classifies in the same category as cheating. This can be compared to any other interest one might have. For example, if someone is interested in cars, then someone using steroids in sports can be compared to someone stealing a car. Now that person has a better car than just like a player using steroids would be stronger than his opponent or competition. This is my opinion of course and because there is another side to this subject, using steroids in sports is an argumentative problem. I picked out three different articles with three different perspectives on steroids in a particular sport. I will show you what I thought of steroids before and after I read and analyzed these articles.

My view on steroids before I read these articles was laid back because I thought it was a minor problem that would be fixed immediately. One of the articles, “Sports and Drugs,” has a sub article that is focused on steroid use among younger teens. This article got me thinking that maybe steroids are becoming a bigger problem as time moves on. The first line just summed up the whole article. It says, “Forty percent of high school seniors say steroids are easy to obtain (618).” I think that in order to fix this problem, you must start at the beginning. In this case, the roots of steroids begin in high school. First, school officials or someone else needs to make it hard for students to obtain steroids and if they happen to use them, they need to find a way to catch these students. After that, they need to be punished enough so that the next time they will think twice before making the same mistake again. I believe that if you start in high school, the next levels will be easier to handle.

My view on steroids has changed considerably mainly due to a particular article. This article is called, “High School Testing Loses Momentum.” There are a couple of reasons why this article has changed my perspective on steroids. One reason is the fact that Texas, Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that currently have random steroid-testing programs. This article states that even these last three programs haven’t had much success lately. My opinion is that steroid users are getting much smarter. They are looking for the steroids that can’t be tested yet. To back my opinion, the article also shows that, “Texas reported seven positives out of 19,000 tests done through the school year.” Clearly, the reason all these programs are being thrown away is because they are not finding enough positive tests. Steroid users are still out there according to article, Sports and Drugs.” On page 618, it says, “The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the number of boys who have used steroids at least once increased from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent between 1991 and 2003.” Combined with the female steroid users, it comes out to roughly one million high school steroid users. A problem it certainly is, these steroid-testing programs need to toughen up and find some better ways of catching these illegal substance users.

“Poll: Economy Bigger Problem for MLB.” This is an article which shows the audiences’ view on steroids in Major League Baseball. According to the sources, “more than 80 percent of people who follow sports believed there is current use of human growth hormone in baseball, but those same fans perceive the economy as a much bigger problem for baseball than performance-enhance drugs.” This is the first sentence of the article and it nearly summarizes the whole article. They are saying that Major League Baseball needs to be worried about the economy affecting their teams rather than the players that are using illegal substances. I think that Major League Baseball officials have less control over the economy than they have over the players. The economy will get back up soon but if the officials ignore steroid use, than pretty soon everyone baseball player is using steroids just to be able to compete. I don’t think that the Major League officials, other sports organizations and even fans want this because it affects nearly everyone in a negative way. Baseball won’t be fun to watch because everyone is hitting home runs and the officials would have lost control of the league by then. I think that most people don’t want that to happen and the Major League Baseball organization needs to step up to this problem.

I believe I have shown what the people, experts and I think about steroids in sports. The people seem to looking on at this problem as something that’s not their business. The experts are trying to find bigger problems that professional sports organizations and high school sports programs need to be addressing before they start dealing with steroids. I think that everyone involved with steroids one way or another should be doing something to prevent it. Steroids are a bigger problem in sports than you might think.