Do you care about performance enhancing drugs in sports?

It's honestly never bothered me in baseball or football. I'd argue the mlb should go back to PEDs because that league has been boring ever since the steroid era ended.

I care, but I still watch sports anyway because otherwise I'd have no idea what the guys were talking about around the proverbial "water cooler."

Incidentally, my brain initially read this thread's title as "Do you care about performance enhancing drugs in e-sports," and I got way too excited imagining roid rage Overwatch matches and/or a dozen incredibly twitchy people fidgeting manically in front of their screens because of too much speed. That'd be a sad but incredibly droll sight to behold... so my answer would still be the same. :-P

I watch sports and don't care about PEDs. I know some people argue records and what not, but let's be honest players from different time periods had way less knowledge about physical fitness and way less access to the sophisticated sports medicine of today. I'd say modern medicine is a bigger "PED" than actual banned substances. I think Larry Bird used to smoke in the offseason. Can you imagine Lebron doing that?

I care about PEDs and I don't really watch much sports. Though I wouldn't say that PEDs is the reason why; I'm just not so interested (unless the Oilers make the playoffs).

In particular I'm concerned about the prevalence of PEDs driving athletes into taking dangerous risks (whether it be the drugs themselves or who they're getting them from). It's a bit of a slippery slope argument I know, but cases like Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong stick out in my mind as examples of how far people will take it.

So on the one hand I can see the argument that as long as it's not illegal, whatever athletes do to "train" is fair game. But I also at least *prefer* for major league athletes to be role models as well as just good at sports. I feel like a decent compromise would be similar to legalized marijuana: leagues could approve particular substances / regimens to keep the sports exciting and also level the playing field (this could just be me being naive, but I presume athletes that go down the PED rabbit hole do so because they feel they have to do it to keep up with everyone else who also does it).

My thinking against PEDs is that they can be dangerous, and if sports organizations allow them, then the only way to stay competitive would be to take dangerous drugs. That shouldn't be a choice that athletes are forced to make.

Split em up. Drug leagues for the athletes who are willing to take drugs And a normal league for those that dont.

@lestephan: This probably makes me a bad person, since roided up superfreaks in jerseys will end in something more aching to a gladiatorial arena...

With that said, this is probably what would make me watch sports. Fill em up with all the drugs and throw them at eachother.

Yeah I care. If you made every enhancement legal in a sporting sense the desire to win will only end up destroying the health of athletes and that's not right imo.

Hell, if reading about the East German doping and its impact on the athletes doesn't turn you completely against PEDs in sport then you're kind of a monster.

I watch a lot of sports, and it sucks that PEDs are an issue in sports. It makes it very hard to, for example, appreciate cyclist Chris Froome, even as a Brit, when Sky have such a track record of accusations of cheating, and the sport itself has such a history of it. I don't care about it to the extent that people should be punished for it forever - I'm very much in favour of players like Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez being in the MLB hall of fame, because they're part of the story of baseball. Yeah, Bonds used steroids but that wasn't the only reason why he was so historically great. Steroids improved his power, helped him recover from injuries, etc., but steroids can't explain his hand-eye-coordination or his exceptional plate discipline. I'm less sympathetic towards players like Rafael Palmeiro, who put up historically significant numbers while juicing but would probably have never been considered all-time greats if not for the edge they gained from cheating.

I guess I judge issues like this on a case-by-case basis. Justin Gatlin is a punk. Daniel Cormier is unofficially undefeated in my eyes, because Jon Jones got busted for both fights (first time was cocaine related, second was a steroid). I felt a bit bad for Maria Sharapova after she was busted for using a drug that her Russian medical team considered perfectly legal, but it was stupid that nobody thought about the ramifications of her getting caught taking it. It was absolutely right that Robinson Cano was suspended, but he's almost certainly still a Hall of Famer.

Several sports can help mitigate the usage of performance enhancers by reducing some of the strains of the sport. You can't tell baseball players not to dive for every fly ball, or not to throw 101 mph, but you can make the teams play 120-140 games, rather than 162. Does the NBA season need to be 82 games plus up to 20 or more playoff games? Does the Tour de France need cobble stages, brutal mountain stages, and time trial sprints in a compressed time period?

I tend to watch some Cycling "tour de france" etc. And ped's really killed the sport with just crazy razia style check ups on cyclists at 3 in the morning at there homes and stuff in order to keep the sport "clean" and then "smarter / team with more money" i am looking at you team sky are probably doping up the wazuu but they got enough dokters / specialist to circumvent the rules with weird blood transfusions and stuff. So i have this weird view of let them just all dope let them fucking kill them self for the sport no rules take as much EPO as you want if you get a hearth attack at some french mountain then it's your own fault.

Steroids are really, really, bad for your body. I think simply for the safety of young athletes who are put under a lot of pressure by themselves and others to succeed, not standing strong against PEDs will results in a lot of people getting really hurt. "Fill them up with all the drugs and throw them at each other" it's kind of gross and uncaring.

I like sports, I just don't really care much about watching other people play them which is why I didn't choose an option above. PEDs is cheating and I have been under that impression my whole life that cheating is bad and unsportsmanlike. What's wrong with athletes pushing their bodies to their max naturally? That's the way it's supposed to be done. If that isn't good enough well then too bad, that's as good as you can get. Can't wait to discuss body modifications in sports in the future. ; )

Yeah I care, mostly from the human level because they are terrible for you. They should be illegal.

I still watch sports though, and it doesn't affect my ability to watch sports. I really only watch soccer and football. I definitely think there should continue to be laws around them. I think they need to get better about making judgements with those laws in regard to context of the situation. If someone is legitimately injured and a normal person with those injuries would be given steroids as a normal treatment, then they probably should be able to get treated the same way.

The sports I have most interest in are generally team games where the effect of PED's are somewhat reduced. Sure you might gain some athletic advantage but most team sports are more about decision making and team work than pure athletic performance

Using PEDs is cheating. Using them should earn you an immediate suspension and fine, with much harsher suspensions and loss of salary for repeat offenders, leading to lifetime bans.

That being said, I am somewhat sympathetic to athletes who genuinely make mistakes. A lot of dietary supplements and medication contain substances that are illegal, and I think a fine and suspension is definitely warranted, but I would consider if their values indicate that it is for normal use or if it’s higher than that. I would still suspend and fine, but right now I think you get too similar punishments regardless of the extent to which you cheat, unless you’re a repeat offender of course.

MMA is the only sport I watch regularly and I absolutely care about PED usage. UFC getting serious about drug testing was a great thing for the sport and it is embarassing that leagues with way more money haven't followed suit. The appeal of PEDs is too dangerous if left unchecked and you end up with players who are forced to partake to be competitive which leads to impressive but short careers and long term damage to their bodies.

I think sports would be way more interesting and entertaining if PEDs we're not only legal but a necessary evil. If every player/athlete was jacked on PEDs to their absolute physical limit we would be in for a wild ride from an audience perspective. I'm not saying I think it should BE that way, just that if it WAS that way it would be entertaining as hell.

Do I have to bring up Chris Benoit and the shit he did that was partially caused by PEDs? Let alone all the poor kids whose only chance to get out of that life is a college sport scholarship? (which is a huge fucking problem in the USA) PEDs will ruin you in so many ways and I understand why some feel like they have to use them but they can not be allowed for the safety of all athletes from youth to professional.

I would have answered I don't know, if that were an option! But no biggie. It's a weird subject with many layers. I think if I leaned any one way, it would be "no" because if one is using it that means many are and it is just naturally leveling the field. And to be honest, not all PEDs are some sort of health destroying things. Like, to the person that mentioned Chris Benoit, he was a powder keg in a lot of ways, of which I would say CTE was the greater one.

From an American sense I think that every baseball player caught that had HOF number should still be in the HOF and it's nuts to me that they aren't. More to learn from them being in there than just pretending like they didn't exist yet LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT THEM ALL THE TIME.

Only insofar as I'm worried about the athlete's health. We've fostered an industry where only the top .1% get a vast amount of riches while everyone not in major leagues just gets pittance. It's a real shitty industry, but it means that people will try anything to make it, even if they risk destroying their body.

Between concussions and broken bones sports are dangerous as it is and can really reduce a person's quality of life in their later years. We certainly don't need potentially dangerous substances on top of it.

I don't care as long as we know. Use drugs to enhance your performance and win? Asterisk next to your stats. People who do it clean and win should be noted above those who dope.

Saved me some typing there.

I used to hate it, but pro sports is about watching people do crazy feats that I can never do. So it kind of adds to the superhero aspect. But it's not worth it when the person's health suffers.

I think it fucking sucks that the standards are set so high, and to be the best you might need to take some shortcuts because somebody else might. Part of the charm of old baseball is it felt like a bunch of regular shlubs out on the diamond. Now you need to be scientifically perfect human to really succeed in pro sports, and if you aren't gifted than maybe some PEDs might help you make it to the pros.

@jay_ray said:

Sorry, but I need to shut this down right now.

Yes, Benoit took steroids, but that was probably 5% of the reason why he went insane. 10% of the reason was painkiller use, and 85% was that he used the diving headbutt as a signature move (Harley Race, Dynamite Kid, and Bryan Danielson all used the move, and all have suffered with concussions and head trauma), took unprotected head shots with chairs and other objects, and had twenty years of wear and tear on his brain. He definitely now would be identified as having CTE. The autopsy revealed his brain was in similar condition to that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient. Benoit was 40 years old.

The notion that steroids directly contributed to his death was a story concocted by the press in the wake of the tragedy - it is medically inaccurate at best and an utter fabrication at worst. Every wrestler who appeared on interviews in the wake of the tragedy, even career bullshitters like Kevin Nash, wanted to talk about concussions, but were only asked questions about steroids by cretins like Nancy Drew. This is not to defend steroids of his use of them, but this is a case where it shouldn't be considered a factor, except to say that steroids probably helped Benoit continue wrestling while suffering from injuries or dealing with great pain, which meant he was taking bumps during a time when he might otherwise be rehabbing or was generally away from the ring. Again, 5%, at best.

The three least interesting things in the world (to me):

1) sports

2) PEDs in sports

3) gambling on sports

I care about PED's, but I still watch sports, because I refuse to believe the majority is using them. I'll naively hold on to the notion that someone is innocent until they get caught and I realize that'll always be a catch-up game. As someone who enjoys watching athletics (among other things) I will have to accept frequent drug bans.

There are still too many great and genuine moments in sports that make watching them worthwile. And a lot of them aren't even about winning. I still look forward to every Olympic Games, watching sports all day long. Right now, they're bunching several European Championships in different disciplines together, giving me two weeks of rowing, swimming, gymnastics, athletics and cycling. It's just great. PED's suck, but damn, I just like watching sports so much.

Fuck drugs, it's time for a cyborg sports league. Get augmented or get out.

I think it would be funny to see all drugged up athletes compete in their own league, separate from one that is rigorously tested.

I do care about it, but when i watch like the Champions League it doesn't really haunt my mind that these people could be on the drugs. While it's pretty much the 1st thing i think off when i see Tour de France. While one of these does 3 AM check ups , while the other one never does that. At some point, making sure that the audience doesn't hear about it happening, helps to keep people at ease i guess. But in a perfect world, every person competing would need to be in the clear ofcourse. You don't want to create an environment where you can't be 'the best athlete' without resorting to illegal substances that can fuck you up for life in some ways.

I don't care about PEDs and I don't watch sports. (Your vote) 24%

I don't like sports. I can't watch them without thinking about ways that they're unequal in terms of gender. Speaking of which, is testosterone considered a performance enhancing drug that is regulated sports associations? A bit silly, if a natural biological hormone is considered a "performance enhancing drug".

I think I remember news about a female runner in the Olympics getting in trouble for what the Olympic commission deemed "unnatural levels of male hormones", because everyone has to have binary, exactly stereotypical hormone levels. And everyone's body can just adhere to binarism. And everyone was treating her body with suspect and looking for "wrong" male features in her. It was entirely body shaming and gender policing and gross.

Like, I have a problem with the way some transgender people uphold or reinforce gender norms via "transgenderism", or whatever the proper word is. And worse yet how the trans community likes to sweep it under the rug and pretend like the majority of trans people want to do away with gender roles. And sweep the issue under the rug and pretend it isn't there, and that the only people who think otherwise are "TERFs". This stuff around female hormone levels and body policing and shaming in the sports is on a whooooooole different level of messed up than anything I have ever heard out of the trans community.

Testosterone is a naturally occurring, healthy female hormone. And women all have different levels of it. Telling a woman she has too much of it to compete, is like telling me I have too much testosterone. If female athletes have "too much testosterone", then I have too much testosterone.

Honestly, sports can just disappear for all I'm concerned. I have no interest in it. Nor do I have any caring about "performance enhancing drugs" or regulating it. It can all fall by the wayside, as far as I'm concerned.

@harbinlights: Testosterone is an anabolic steroid hormone. Pretty much anything that can cause unnaturally elevated levels of testosterone is considered a PED in sports because testosterone is the most important hormone for developing muscle mass.

And I believe the athlete you're thinking of is South African runner Caster Semenya, a double Olympic gold medallist in the women's 800 metres. A recent rule change in international athletic competition will require hyperandrogenous athletes to take medication to reduce naturally high testosterone levels or compete in competition against men, and South Africa's Olympic committee is protesting the decision because they believe it's targeted at certain athletes, especially Semenya.

I don't think we should derail the thread by diving into this issue, as it's complicated and very thorny.

Don't watch much sport but I'm all for specialised drug allowed versions personally, more entertaining when folk perform better, might draw me in. I'd be very interested in seeing what people can do with some creative body chemistry as well as all the hard work and dedication etc.

That's exactly who I was talking about! That is messed up!

Hope South Africa's Olympic committee wins this!

The natural human body can do AMAZING things naturally with work and training. One need only go to a circus to see even mild examples of amazing athletics at a low-rent circus....and seeing the Peking Acrobats is eye opening.

I think athletes should be drug free; yet, I would even say that as a society we need to firm about caring first. It has to start with the fans who generate the revenu, the organizations and the athletes won't stop doping until the loss of money/advertising for doping is extreme. Society needs to make doping not worth doing first - it only happens if fans close their wallets.

Boxing and American football cause brain damage. The repeated drastic weight cutting done by athletes in sports divided by weight classes almost certainly isn't healthy. Women participating in sports like gymnastics and figure skating have an increased risk of developing an eating disorder. Competition in general involves a high risk of injury -- during the Olympic Games around 10% of the athletes sustain injuries of varying degrees. I personally know athletes who have sustained major injuries and a couple of ex-elite athletes who have needed hip replacements at a relatively young age due to osteoarthritis caused by sports.

The point I'm trying to make by bringing these things up is that athletic competitions at an elite level aren't and never have been about health above all else. They are about maximizing human performance.

This is one of the strongest women in the world:

Does she look healthy to you? Of course not! She's morbidly obese, a condition that, just like anabolic steroids, brings with it a host of health risks (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, birth defects and stillbirth in case of pregnancy etc. etc. ad nauseam). Presumably she gained a fair amount of that weight while bulking to get big and strong, muscle being easier to build while you're on a large caloric surplus. In other words, letting herself loose and getting fat made gaining strength easier. So putting on fat both helped her build strength easier and harms her health -- sort of like steroids. Should she be banned from competition for putting her health at risk in this way?

As for the "unfair/unearned advantage" argument, I don't buy it. Is it fair that some people are born genetic freaks? Is it fair that some people are born into families that value athleticism and/or communities with good opportunities for athletic development (the presence of a good coach, a good competitive scene etc.)? One could go on listing endless other "unfair" or "unearned" advantages. Rules in sports are not really there to make things "fair" (which is an impossibility), they are there to make competition interesting. Take weight classes. Fabrício Werdum, Cain Velasquez and other heavyweights being much larger than Conor McGregor is no more "unfair" than McGregor being blessed with better genetics etc. than x number of other fighters out there, but watching McGregor get absolutely steamrolled by guys that make him look like a pygmy is not interesting for anyone. Same goes for sex differences. So without having weight classes and a separate division for women you miss out on a lot of interesting matches, therefore you make rules prohibiting ludicrous matchups like Velasquez vs. McGregor or Lesnar vs. Rousey etc.

I should point out that I don't recommend that anyone take dangerous performance enhancing drugs. However, if people want to do it I think it should be up to them, and I would certainly be interested in watching some of the freakshow competitions that would result from athletes having total freedom to pump themselves full of whatever they want. To keep things interesting and prohibit drugged athletes from pushing everyone else out of the game you could simply make separate divisions for clean and drugged competitors, just like we have for men and women, people of different weights etc.

Steroids are a pretty big problem mostly because they have so much impact on health.

But blood doping in cycling always seemed like something blown way out of proportion. It's already been established that cyclists, runners, and marathoners at the professional level train in high altitude to increase their red blood cell count naturally. So I never understood why doing it artificially is such a big deal when others have been doing it naturally forever. It seemed more like an excuse for the community behind the Tour De France to vilify the American athletes.

Sure I always want a level playing field and I don't want athletes to feel they have to ruin their health to be able to perform.

As long as there is no health risk to the player and every player has access to them, I don't care if people enhance.

I really only care about it in the more violent sports like football, MMA, and boxing since more power, that "unfair power" causes more injuries like CTE, broken bones, etc. PEDs do have their legitimate uses like recovering from an injury or an older athlete having low testosterone, which should be possibly allowed.

My main concern with PEDs is the athlete's health first and foremost. Other than that if it's safe then why not? The PEDs don't replace actual talent. Load me with the works and I still couldn't hit a ball from any major league pitcher.

We are watching sports to see a good show, so they are kind of trying to update the shows quality. The thing that really bothers me is the fate of young athletes, seems like these kids are left with no choice if they want to perform.