Every day, young teens observe rippled, muscular bodies of their favorite professional athlete.
As teen athletes flip on ESPN’s “Sports Center” show with their remote every morning, they bear witness to tons of role models being accused of steroid usage.
Teens — even 13-year-olds — are beginning to take the road most taken and following the dark footsteps of their law-breaking role models.
Today, athletes in the United State s are beginning to take steroids at much younger ages. Federal laws against steroids should have harsher penalties — for example, athletes should be banned from the sport they play and statistics and records they worked extremely hard to achieve should be erased. Furthermore, professional athletes should also be sentenced to a minimum of five years in jail for the first offense.
Athletes work their entire life to get to the pros and when they take a short cut they should pay for the mistake with something they love dear. Once athletes observe such a punishment, they will think twice before using steroids.
Steroids greatly enhances a players ability to perform, providing the user with muscles larger in mass and size. According to the “Do It Now Foundation,” disgraced athletes that use or have used “roids” are an embarrassment to the sport and to themselves, and the Office of National Drug Control notes anabolic steroids give users an extreme unfair advantage.
Steroids are highly dangerous drugs that create abnormal bone and muscle growth. According to the American Medical Association, using “Arnolds,” as steroids are sometimes called, work so fast they can increase a user’s bench press weight by 15 pounds in one week —compared to at most three pounds a month for a hardworking, non-steroid using athlete.
Steroid users give up the control of carbohydrates, protein, metabolism, water balance, and the function of their cardiovascular systems, along with a few organs according to author Suzanne Levert. Most of the bodily components that are taken over by “the juice” are enormous factors in ones athletic ability. The juice enhances endurance, strength, power speed, and almost every necessity athletes need to compete in sports, notes the Do It Now Foundation.
’Roids are sold and bought by despicable, cheating coaches, including some who make athletes take the drug to get ahead of their opponents.
Now, due to the lack of consequences, more high school athletes are beginning to use steroids — 1.8 percent of 12th graders claim they have used steroids in the past year, according to the American Journal of Psychiatry. There should also be multiple drug tests a month for every level of competitive athletics.
Steroid punishments need to be increased to harsher and more meaningful punishments. If coaches and players know they risk losing their jobs and careers, then they will not take steroids, buy steroids or sell steroids.
The fact that college athletes using steroids lose a year of eligibility for the first offense is great, but a second offense should result in the athlete being banned from college athletics.
The world of sports needs to take action and stop the consumption of steroids by athletes, or the pros will turn into a league of Arnold Swartzeneggers. High school sports will also follow the awful footsteps of the professionals if the use of steroids is not put to a halt.
The fate of the sports future is in the hands of the federal lawmakers.
Christopher Allen
Hillsborough Middle School
