Should steroids be banned or regulated?

[kenel]

Keeping up with the need for a "super hero" type in the world now-a-days is tough. Our sports heroes are as close as we get, but is mother nature keeping up with public demands? Should we ban, or simply regulate steriod use as an enchancement drug?

 

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[YT2095]

if it`s for "sports" then I say Banned, for the simple reason it would then cease to be about how Good you are at the sport (like it should be), but a matter of how good your Chemist is!

[fafalone]

..as opposed to how good your fitness trainer is?

 

It's just another advantage you should be able to give yourself... I say regulated only because of physical safety concerns. Required doctors visits and such.

[Sayonara]

How many times do I have to tell you?

 

Roid rage is FUNNY.

[blike]

Regulated for personal use, banned for sports (excluding bodybuilding).

[fafalone]

banning things is not the answer.

[kenel]

What's the purpose of banning for sports use if you're going to allow "individual" training the use of them? Don't you all want to see 120 homeruns this season? A few more teeth on the ice after a hockey fight? Helmets and other safety gear rendered useless in football? Isn't this the american fantasy with sports? Why not give the public what it wants.

[blike]

Banning steroids in sports is necessary. Sports are all about natural ability. Some athletes may not want to risk the side effects of testosterone and other horomones just to be able to compete. Athletes should not have to trash their body to be able to keep up with those who are willing to. Banning steroids from all athletic events levels the playing field.

[Sayonara]

I thought the point of athletics was to see who is the most athletic person, not whose comptetitive ethics or pocket book can be stretched the furthest.

[fafalone]

"natural ability"? Define natural. Vitamin supplements aren't natural... I doubt you advocate them being banned.

 

So what chemicals do you ban? Just the ones that work really well? If an athlete has a cold, should he be banned from taking Sudafed because it's a stimulant drug?

 

Should all legal performance enhancing drugs besides hormones be allowed... now we're getting in to arbitrary distinctions.

[Sayonara]

Are you talking to me, Blike, or both?

[YT2095]

a level of common sense must come into play here, and they KNOW what drugs will give them that unfair advantage, sudafed`s not exactly a sports enhancing stim anyway, besides being an enantiomer. if we keep it REAL here, and reduce it to Synthetics, then Synthetic enhancers should be banned

[fafalone]

Testosterone is not a synthetic... and actually I believe Ephedra-based energy things have been used for performance enhancing... the main ingredient being the same.

[YT2095]

Hmmm... I can see the problem here is going to be one of definition then (happens alot in Science:) )

I could say things that naturaly occur in food groups, but even that`s tampered with.

maybe if I state that things that we can live without that occur in our body natualy, and so have no need for extra need to be banned.

we need our vits in foods, suplements I have no prob with, but things that we can make ouselves in our bodies naturaly (including steriods) should not be messed with, as that WOULD be artificial.

forget I said "Synthetic" that was a bad wording.

[fafalone]

That's really, really broad and would eliminate many of the every day things that are currently allowed.

[mossoi]

I want these substances to stay banned for a slightly different reason to those above.

 

I was briefly in a national sports team (sadly not for long, I didn't quite make the grade) so I have experience of the feelings and emotions involved in striving for this level.

 

Taking steriods is a big 'life' decision and not something that anybody should do lightly. If they were to be permitted then many people (myself included) would not want to get involved in that side of sport. This means that reaching the highest level becomes possible only for those who have decided to make a sport their chosen profession.

 

I think there is a big difference between the American sports philosophy and that of the rest of the world in that the American public seem to be that much displaced from the sports men and women. Take American football for example, those guys are trained and trained to the absolute limit and have been throughout there teens passing through school on the strength of their sporting ability. The nearest comparison in the UK is rugby union, a sport which has only recently become professional (previous England rugby teams consisted of men who were lawyers and policemen in the week and rugby players at the weekend).

 

I think sport should be kept as something that is accessible in this manner as I like to think of that world being achievable and common to all people rather than watching those that have been nurtured from an early age into becoming a 'sports machine' battle it out.

 

Most athletes don't make it to the top and being an out of work professional sportsman is not an ideal situation - permitting steriods et al is a significant step in forcing people to go the way of the professional earlier in life and could force real talent to be overlooked because they just weren't prepared to burn their non-sports bridges quite that early on in life.

[atinymonkey]

"natural ability"? Define natural. Vitamin supplements aren't natural... I doubt you advocate them being banned.

 

So what chemicals do you ban? Just the ones that work really well? If an athlete has a cold' date=' should he be banned from taking Sudafed because it's a stimulant drug?

 

Should all legal performance enhancing drugs besides hormones be allowed... now we're getting in to arbitrary distinctions.[/quote']

 

Anything that gives the user an advantage that the athletes do not have should be banned as cheating.

 

It doesn’t matter if it’s steroids or strapping tigers to your legs; it’s all an effort to gain an advantage over the other competitors. Chucking mud in the water by saying tigers are natural is just silly.

 

Any yes, if the athlete gets a cold and straps on a tiger to keep warm, they will fall foul of the rules. Extenuating circumstance is taken into consideration and athletes have had bans repelled if they have proved the presence of performance enhancing agents was due to something other than an effort in enhance performance.

 

This thread isn't about the legality of drugs, just the methods of keeping athletic events on a level playing feild, one on which you don't have to risk heart attacks to keep in the game.

[Sayonara]

I think what ATM is trying to say is that it's the level playing field at the start (i.e., nothing 'added' to the atheletes as it were) that allows the sporting or athletic event to correctly identify which of the participants has developed their innate skills the most.

[fafalone]

This brings us back to basic nutritional supplements, where do you draw the line between those and "performance enhancing drugs"?

[Sayonara]

Well, a line obviously has been drawn by whichever body is the authority presiding over the events in question, so what would be helpful to the discussion is if we could get hold of some material that goes into the reasoning.

[fafalone]

New substances for athletes to use come out all the time tho, whatever body repsonsible for it bans new substances all the time... what are they basing it on?

[Sayonara]

It's not unreasonable to assume there must be some guidelines for identifying products that use a certain group of mechanisms, or give particular results.

 

I don't suppose anybody had a look for anything...?

[fafalone]

Slippery slope. Take the IOC guidelines, have a cup of regular coffee before an event and you'll get stripped of any medals if they find out.

[Sayonara]

What's a slippery slope? Using portable criteria, or having controls of any kind?

 

If you have access to the IOC guidelines, please do post them. I want to see what sort of structure they have.

[fafalone]

http://www.wada-ama.org/docs/web/standards_harmonization/code/list_standard_2004.pdf

 

Found that through olympic.org, so I'm guessing that's the guidelines they use. While it doesn't specificly state caffeine, but since caffeine is a stimulant it's covered under pharmacologically similar substances. And the list is hardly exhaustive, as the narcotics section makes no ban on the most powerful narcotics existing. There's probably a more detailed list somewhere, or they changed it this year, because the limit was 12ug/ml.