Should we legalize performance-enhancing drugs in tennis sports?

Over the past 25 years, the challenges presented by performance-enhancing drugs in sports, and the inadequacy of drug testing agencies to deal with them, have reached a point where even high-ranking officials are taking out their frustration .

“There’s definitely a performance-enhancing effect if you’re wearing things that enhance oxygen transport to tissues,” says Larry Bowers, an athletic drug testing expert and senior managing director at the US Anti-Doping Agency. He says the anonymous surveys of athletes indicate that only a tenth of them use performance-enhancing drugs. But he recognizes that doped athletes can win most of the time.”

Charles Yesalis, a professor of epidemiology at Pennsylvania State University who has written extensively on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports for the past 23 years, believes that a “large percentage” of record holders likely doped to get there. to the goal. “Many experts, at least in private, feel that way,” he says.
“Yesalis maintains that drug testing, as practiced in previous games, has been a ‘sham’. Just because of my own value system, I have never seriously considered legalizing drugs,” Yesalis says. to raise your hands and say, ‘Let everyone do what they want. Performance Drugs Beat The Olympics – Matthew Herper, 02.15.02, 12:00 pm ET Forbes.com

Like Charles Yesalis of the US Anti-Doping Agency, I feel like saying “‘Let everyone do what they want,'” but maybe that would be the wrong signal, so let’s discuss what might happen if performance-enhancing drugs were legalized for professional athletes:

– Young people would receive the wrong message.

– Our general anti-drug 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 brain and GORK (only God really knows)!

– All drugs should be legalized!

– We’d have a quarter of the world taking speed, a quarter smoking cannabis, another quarter snorting cocaine and the rest wondering what to wear to look “Normal”! Kidding, it would be a disaster! Or would it be?

– Existing sports fans and dysfunctional wanabe champion devoid of any talent would start taking drugs.
hoping it works for them! (Wouldn’t work though, because you still need to be a pure bread/great athlete
gain.)

– Greedy parents would start pumping their children with all sorts of terrible things. (How naive I am, 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 nationwide by the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 4.8 percent had used steroids without a 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. “. The impact of steroids was felt in high school sports CW Nevius Wednesday, September 20, 2006 – San Francisco Chronicle

Thirsty; At the Sydney Games, of almost 3,000 athletes tested, around 80 per cent of them admitted to taking at least one ‘legal’ drug or supplement. More than 500 admitted to taking more than five. It is clear that the ‘medicalization’ of human performance, at least in the Olympic Games, means that, ironically, sport could not exist without drugs, ‘legal’ or not.” Dec 8, 06 16:15

“Nobody wants to see me throw the shot 65 feet or throw the puck 200 feet, and the only way I can make a great shot is on steroids.” He said the competition would still be legitimate because he said 80 to 90 percent of the athletes he would face were using steroids. SPORT VIEWS; Free Athletics From Steroids SPORT VIEWS; By EDWIN MOSES

Nicolas Escude former ATP player (Career High ATP Ranking – Singles: 17 (Jun 26, 2000) at the 2002 French Open. In Paris, French Davis Cup player Escude said: “To say that today’s tennis 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 legalizing drug use by professional athletes:

– If the estimate is that around 80% of athletes use some form of performance-enhancing substance, then there is a strong case for legalization!

– Performance-enhancing drugs should be legal only for professional athletes and those over the age of 18.

– Laws should be made to protect non-professional athletes and young people. – Zero tolerance for use or abuse.

– Do not tolerate the use of performance-enhancing drugs by non-professionals until the age of 18!

– The Doctors and Sports Medicine Centers must be responsible for the medication of the Athletes.

– Athletes and Doctors and laboratories must assume full responsibility for their own decisions.

– The coaches must remain completely out of the equation, the professionals on the field; Doctors, scientists and laboratories should be the only ones making decisions with athletes.

There are many more problems, but to shorten this article we have to understand that the general public is very aware of what is happening and so are the officials, sponsors and governments. There is too much money involved, billions and billions of dollars; we are no longer in the era of “Pierre de Coubertin”. It is time for a change and everyone will feel better about the situation, the IOC, the governing bodies, the test sites and the athletes themselves.

Why then do we continue with this farce? Keep saying our sports are clean when at any Olympic game more than 80% of the athletes are “sick” or asthmatic, or have liver, heart or lung problems to be prescribed “legal” (illegal) drugs and compete. ! And when almost every week there is a report on drug use by professional athletes!

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

“For six years I didn’t know they were giving me a form of steroid of the legal type they used to give horses until they decided it was too strong even for horses,” McEnroe told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney on Monday. .” [http://www.cnn.com/2004/SPORT/01/11/mcenroe.steroids.ap/] – CNN WORLD SPORTS Sunday, Jan 11, 2004 Posted: 8:52 PM EST (0152 GMT)

…and the ATP, ITF and anyone else who analyzes players did not detect “STERIDES DOSE TO HORSE” in John McEnroe’s blood or urine tests? Definitely, “You can’t be serious!”

“In his book ”You Can’t Be Serious,” McEnroe said he suspected steroids and amphetamines had found their way into the highest levels of the sport in the 1980s. “Why were no steroids or amphetamines detected either? on other players, what if the players were tested at all?

The excuse, “tennis authorities were only testing recreational drugs”, oh…and apparently cocaine 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 culprits on the Tennis Tour then? Or is this a case where everyone is “stupid” and these organizations know better?

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