Vast resources are dedicated to detecting and punishing doping among athletes in professional sport. Despite the punishments, many competitors use performance-enhancing drugs anyway. Should doping be allowed in sport? Would it be better to let athletes take what they want? Or should doping be managed and controlled to create a more level playing field, rather than granting unfair advantage?
Yes, doping should be allowed
Doping has been around for centuries. It is impossible to eliminate. Resources would be better spent working out how to keep athletes safe while doping, rather than trying to find dopers.
Doping has always been a part of sport
Doping has been around for centuries. Athletes have used it to improve their performance for years. Since it is present in much of sports history, we should not limit it.
Doping is allowed in other segments of the entertainment industry
Sport is part of the entertainment business. Other entertainers are allowed to use drugs to enhance their performance, so athletes should be permitted to dope.
Doping would remove many financial barriers to elite level sport
There are currently many financial barriers preventing competitors with fewer resources from reaching the elite level. Allowing doping would remove many of these financial barriers and make professional sport more accessible to everyone.
Right now, athletes and coaches prioritize remaining undetected in their doping programs. If doping was permitted, there would be more training programs and guides around major leagues to ensure the safety of the players when they accept certain drugs into their bodies. Instead of a potentially dangerous underground of drug use, a more open policy on doping would decrease the possibilities of injury or even death.
Athletes and coaches are always one step ahead. They have more resources than the governing bodies and there will always be those that remain undetected, creating an artificial competitive advantage.
The benefits of doping in sports, on an entertainment level, vastly outweigh the potential disadvantages. Who doesn't want to see stronger, bigger, tougher athletes compete? Sports are, after all, designed to display many facets of peak human physical condition, and doping just ramps that higher and higher to the upper limits of possibility.
Children are often involved in sport at the highest level. It would be irresponsible to allow coaches and parents to push children into taking performance enhancing drugs.
Doping would turn sport into a race to concoct the most powerful drug
Instead of a competition of athletic performance, sports would center on the capacity to concoct the most potent drug. Doping would allow the cultivation and perfection of drugs that enhance an athlete's abilities, and the more powerful and effective the drug, the more companies will want to compete for their versions of the best PED out there.
Performance enhancing drugs can be effective tools to create a level playing field between competitors. Natural talent, rather than predetermined genetics, would be the sole determiner of success in sports. Athletes with already unfair advantages entering into their respecting sports would no longer benefit from their simple biology.
