The Solution to Juicing

For a moment, put yourself into a young athletes mind. There are two paths that every athlete has to make a decision on following. One path leads to a clean career, and not having to worry about being suspended or fined. The other path, leads through the use of steroids and risking your life and career in illegally using them. Each path can lead to glory and success. The consequences for the steroid ridden path can be very serious and harmful to a person. So now it is decision time. What do you choose to do?

Path one: You may not be the best athlete, but you still play solidly in your sport. You train hard and legally, and earn your starting spot. You are tested by the NCAA for illegal drug use, and you come up clean. After a few successful years in college, you are drafted into your sport for the pros. You ride the bench, you’re a role player, or play in the minors for a few years while you work your way up to the starting roster. Once you make the starting roster you make a serious impact to your team. Again you find yourself being tested, and again you come across clean. Eventually you help lead your team to the playoffs and possibly a championship, and make the all-star team. You finish out your career knowing you left it all out on the field, or court, and make it to the hall of fame. This may not always happen, but this is all accomplished without the use of steroids, and is the most often chosen path for most athletes today.

Path two: You may not be the best athlete, but you still play solidly in your sport. You see that some people are better then you, even though you are working hard, and you decide to make a drastic choice. You make a few phone calls and get yourself hooked up with a steroid dealer. I am not sure the steroid going price, but you spend either your hard earned money, or your parents money to get the steroids. You take the steroids and see instant results. Your now one of the top athletes and go to a very prestigious college for your sport. You are a true freshman starter and are having a great season, and then you are randomly selected for a drug test the next day. Quickly, you try to find any way possible to help you pass the test, but your efforts are unsuccessful. So the next morning you go in and test. The results come back stating that you have tested positive for steroid use. Under NCAA rules, you are suspended for one full year. So you come back the next year without steroid use, and you feel like your still behind, so you get back into taking them. You finish out your college career without being tested again and make it to the pros. You have a few good years and then are tested again. Once again you test positive for steroid use. You are fined, and you serve your suspension based on your sport. In baseball, you sit out 50 games, in basketball you sit out 10 games, in football you sit out 4 games. After the suspension, you come back and finish your career clean, but you end up being injured a lot because of your weakened body from your previous steroid use.

After seeing both results, which path would you choose?

Now why would anyone want to choose the path of steroid use? That question can be answered in many ways. First of all, today in sports, athletes are becoming bigger, faster, and stronger in every way, and for some people, it is hard to keep up with those that are more naturally gifted. Steroids can “help an athlete build bigger muscles far faster than with workouts alone. The benefits? Both strength and stamina, and the fame and riches enhanced performance can bring” (Steroids. Par. 2). That’s where they turn to steroids so that they can keep up with the competition, and try to give themselves a distinct edge against the competition. Many of these naturally gifted athletes use legal supplements to help them train, but instead of these steroid users, they are acting legally and safely under their sports restrictions.

Another reason steroids are used is for players that are injured or are trying to recover. Not only do steroids help a person perform better, but they can also help in making an athlete recover from an injury or previous performance. Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner would support this saying, “If you administer them properly and fairly and set the rules strictly, as long as in doing so we recognize there are no negative long-term health-impact issues” (“Cuban Sees “Common Sense” Steroid Use” par. 6). So if you were to look at it that way, it could be a potential option in the future, but most likely wouldn’t be successful.

A third and final reason that an athlete would take steroids in sports is to give them an edge, or advantage against their opponents. This was most noticed in baseball during the years when well-known players such as Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Mark McGuire were all hitting more and more homeruns as they broke numerous records. So as I clearly just stated, steroids do and can benefit an athlete in the short run.

So maybe steroids can benefit an athlete, but there are many serious side effects and consequences in taking them. The side effects can be very serious to a persons health, and could really shorten their life or abilities. These side affects in the long run include “early heart attacks, strokes, liver tumors, kidney failure, and serious psychiatric problems. In addition, because steroids are often injected, users who share needles or use nonsterile techniques when they inject steroids are at risk for contracting dangerous infections, such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C” (Volkrow, 2006 par. 3). This can be proven by athletes around the country dying during workouts and later being found to have taken steroids. Steroids can also put your body through many different unwanted changes to both genders.

Other consequences are different between each sport and vary between occurrences. In any college sport, under NCAA rules, if you test positive for steroid use, you must sit out one full season and lose one year of eligibility. In professional baseball, until recently they really didn’t have much of a policy. Now, a first time occurrence is a 50 game suspension. A second occurrence is a full years suspension. If you for some reason get caught a third time, you are permanently banned from professional baseball. In professional basketball to my knowledge, you receive a ten game suspension for a positive steroid test. In professional football, you are given a four game suspension, and are fined. The most restrictive policy on steroid use is in the Olympics. If you test positive at the Olympics, to my knowledge, you receive a four year ban from any Olympic event. This is a very costly suspension, especially from an Olympic standpoint as you really have to wait 8 years to even compete in the Olympics again, and by that time, you might have been replaced by another, younger athlete.

We all now know the consequences that athletes receive through steroid use, but what about those who are clean and do not test positive ever? I feel that there should be some sort of reward, or incentive for those who stay clean and that reward or incentive should come directly from those who test positive, and also from some help from their respective leagues.

To help with this reward/incentive, along with a positive test, an athlete who tests positive must take a fine that takes away 75% of their total salary. With this money, each league will add between 1 million and 50 million per year into the fund. All this money will be used to create the ultimate theme park that the clean athletes and their families can go to for a full two weeks. They have a choice of when they want to go anytime during the year. This ultimate theme park each year would improve as more people test positive and with the leagues putting more money into it. The theme park would provide nice hotels, food restaurants, and would contain almost any need that a person would want. This theme park would also be located on the ocean so that if an athlete or family member wanted to go on the beach or swimming, they could do so. This theme park would include a water park, roller coaster rides, and anything else that would satisfy all their needs.

So all you who want to use steroids, go ahead. One day you will be caught. This solution will be beneficial for those non-users. And it will be very costly for those who do decide to use them. All athletes, the choice is yours. You all know the logical choice.

The Solution to Juicing

By