Athletes' Use of Performance Enhancing Substances

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and kidneys as well as risk of high blood pressure and heart problems. In some cases, steroid use has led to death” (http://www.drugabuse.gov/JSP4/MOD6/Mod6.pdf). While our favorite athletes are killing themselves, the rest of the world is trying to be like them and competes with them. If Dirk Nowitzki came out tomorrow and said he was doing steroids, many people would be devastated. Steroids destroy the body and yet there are still people who do them because they believe they will become the best and make more baskets or home runs.
Performance enhancing substances are just as bad as using other types of drugs. The editor of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences William A. Darity says that stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, inhalants, and anabolic steroids “mimic endogenous neurotransmitters that are naturally present in the human body and regulate certain processes within the central and peripheral nervous systems. Because the quantity of drugs consumed ...

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substances because their favorite athlete uses them.
If all of these adolescents and college students take steroids because their favorite player does, then the crime rate of using performance enhancing substances will increase as it does every year. In 2001, the National Institute on Drug Abuse did a CDC survey that “indicated that 5.8% of ninth graders, 4.9% of tenth graders, 4.3% of eleventh graders, and 4.3% of twelfth graders reported lifetime illegal use of steroids”( ). Although the drugs are illegal, the number of adolescents who use them increases. If this number grows each year, imagine how many people will be doing steroids just to keep up with the competition in 2011.
If ...

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