Should performance enhancing drugs be legal in sports?

Anti-doping advocates assert that drugs undermine the spirit of sport, which is about pushing natural human limitations and playing within the rules. However, as sport becomes increasingly high-tech, what is 'natural' becomes harder to define. Defenders of doping also dispute the efficacy of drug enforcement, suggesting that anti-doping rules foster the opposite of fair play.

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Agree

Experts In Philosophy

Bennet Foddy Bioethics Researcher

Julian Savulescu Philosophy Professor

Agree

We will argue that performance enhancement is inevitable and unpoliceable, that it is not against the spirit of sport and that we should remove anti-doping legislation to permit safe performance enhancement. We should focus more on testing athletes’ health and fitness to compete.

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01 Jan 2007 Source

Experts In Sports

Lincoln Allison Professor of Sports

Mostly Agree

The most pressing arguments for abandoning the present policy are that it doesn't work and probably catches the (relatively) innocent more than the guilty. As Michael Johnson puts it: "All the organisations involved here are guilty of having rules that don't work." And genetic engineering is probably going to make drugs seem trivial in their impact on our ideas of fairness and performance.

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09 Aug 2004 Source

Disagree

Experts In Sport

Dick Pound Former Head of the World Anti-Doping Agency

Disagree

...You respect the rules, you respect your opponents, you respect yourself. You play fair. I think that bleeds over into life as well. I don't want my grandchildren to have to become chemical stockpiles in order to be good at sports and to have fun at it. ... It's a completely antithetical view to what sport should have been in the first place. It's essentially a humanistic endeavour to see how far you can go on your own talent.

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19 Jan 2003 Source

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0 Points aman punjab 22 Sep 2009 Stance on Question: Mostly Disagree

mostly all person use performance enhancing drugs in sports to do better in sports .they all are greedy for wining and earn name nad fame nad want to be success in all level of the life.
performance enhancing drugs make their way easy.but it is restricted by the law. there is a also a risk of life. sports person actully donot aware how much amount of dose to take during the performance.sometime they take more then they need.they are putting their life in risk.
so it should be banned

1 Point Airius 3 days ago Stance on Question: Disagree

IF we allow performance enhacing drugs, in the end it would come down to who takes the better drug instead of who can legitimately run faster or throw harder. This is not the spirit of sport.

Should performance enhancing drugs be legal in sports?

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