Every athlete learns what steroids are at an early age. They are told that this will make them super strong, but they also quickly learn how bad they are for them and why they should never be taken. Every athlete wants to gain an advantage over the team they play for and performance enhancing drugs have been the solution to this for many years and will continue to be so unless something is done about it, but what if the best way to break free of the benefit that this drug offers is not getting rid of it? How about instead allowing the use of performance enhancing drugs, but they are monitored. Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) are used by a multitude of athletes around the world not only to improve performance, strength or weight gain/loss, but also to help their body for medical reasons. These reasons are proven using medical marijuana and many other types of performance-enhancing drugs. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The use of performance-enhancing drugs has increased more and more in recent years due to the addition of more items on the ban list for sports. An example of an added drug is a form of diuretic. A diuretic is a substance taken to help people use the bathroom more and helps with problems such as kidney stones. Diuretics have been banned from professional sports because they can also be used to hide other banned drugs during a drug test. A diuretic is not actually considered a performance-enhancing drug, but because it can help hide its use, sports leagues have also decided to ban it even though it can help an athlete with certain health problems. sport has to do with morality and coercion. Morally, people do not use performance-enhancing drugs because they believe they give an advantage to those who use them, therefore giving a disadvantage to those who do not use them. The moral reason for banning doping must not be balanced against any claims to autonomy of athletes who would prefer to dope because, upon closer examination, such claims have no force. The moral case for banning doping, however, must be balanced against the enforcement costs imposed on all athletes by an effective ban. Coercion is being forced to do something based on force or the use of threats, and while players are not forced to take performance-enhancing drugs, their use by other athletes causes the mentality of “if you can't beat them, join them." which causes athletes who don't take performance-enhancing drugs to take them anyway in order to keep up with the competition. The first official ban on "stimulant substances" by a sports organization was introduced by the International Federation of Amateur Athletics in 1928. Thirteen Olympic swimming races, the East German swimming team won eleven in 1976. The Use of performance-enhancing drugs is nothing new, but the effectiveness of these drugs is far beyond what it once was. The media only wants to show the banning of those who use these PEDs because they want them to be frowned upon by the public, but in 1992 Vicky Rabinowicz interviewed a small group of athletes. He found that Olympic athletes, in general, believed that the most successful athletes used banned substances. Drugs today are much more effective than they were in the days of strychnine and sheep testicles. Studies conducted on androgens, anabolic steroids, have shown that, even at doses much lower than those used byathletes, muscle strength could be improved by 5-20%. It is also relatively unlikely that most athletes will get tested. The International Amateur Athletic Federation estimates that only 10-15% of participating athletes are tested at each major competition. The World Anti-Doping Agency code declares a performance-enhancing drug illegal if it poses a health risk or violates the "spirit of sport." They define this spirit as follows. The spirit of sport is the celebration of the human spirit, body and mind and is characterized by the following values: ethics, fair play and honesty, health, excellence in performance, character and education, fun and joy, teamwork, dedication and commitment, respect for rules and laws, respect for oneself and other participants, courage, community and solidarity. The most commonly used argument against performance-enhancing drugs is that their use gives an unfair advantage to those who use them, but this is not always the case. The ability to perform well in sporting events is determined by the ability to supply oxygen to the muscles. Oxygen is transported by red blood cells. The more red blood cells, the more oxygen you can carry. This in turn controls an athlete's performance in aerobic exercise. EPO is a natural hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells, increasing packed cell volume (PCV), the percentage of the blood made up of red blood cells. EPO is produced in response to anemia, hemorrhage, pregnancy, or living at altitude. Athletes began injecting recombinant human EPO in the 1970s, but this practice was officially banned in 1985. At sea level, the average person has a PCV of 0.4-0.5. It varies naturally; 5% of people have a packed cell volume greater than 0.5, and that of elite athletes is more likely to exceed 0.5, both because their high packed cell volume led them to success in sport and for their training. An excessive increase in PCV can cause health problems. The risk of damage increases rapidly when PCV exceeds 50%. One study showed that in men whose PCV was 0.51 or greater, the risk of stroke was significantly increased (relative risk = 2.5), after adjusting for other causes of stroke. At these levels, increased PCV combined with hypertension would cause a ninefold increase in stroke risk. In endurance sports, dehydration causes the athlete's blood to thicken, further increasing blood viscosity and pressure. What starts as a relatively low risk of stroke or heart attack can increase dramatically during exercise. Taylor and Francis conducted a study on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. In this study they asked one hundred and eighty-five students at the University of Pennsylvania, one hundred students were women while the other eighty-five were men. They divided the people into three separate groups. One group read that a certain drug helped athletes achieve a 15% improvement in attention, another group read that those athletes achieved a 15% improvement in memory, while the third group read that a drug improved an athlete's physical capabilities by 15%. They asked each group whether the person taking the drug they read about would gain an unfair advantage, and they ranked the advantage from 1 to 5, with 1 indicating no advantage and 5 indicating a huge advantage over other competitors. They then asked if everyone took that drug, would there still be an unfair advantage. The results showed that people thought that if just one person took the drug there would be a benefit.