Steroid Op-Ed

Dan Boel

Christy Vance

English 102

11/12/09

Steroid Op-Ed

Drugs such as alcohol and tobacco are solely responsible for over a half of a million deaths in the United States every year. Anabolic steroids, on the other hand, have never been conclusively linked to a single death in the United States (steroid.com). What’s the difference between these two drugs? Alcohol and tobacco are 100 percent legal for those of age while the nonmedical use of anabolic steroids is illegal. I cannot say that steroids have no negative side effects or that they are perfectly safe to use, however, steroids should have never been made illegal.

It wasn’t until the 1980’s that steroids started to get a bad name. There were news stories all the time telling about steroids being used by high school students or someone “roid raging” on someone else. The media took those stories and ran with them. It became such a big topic that it forced congress to address the issue. In 1991, congress discussed the issue of anabolic steroids and banned their nonmedical use putting them in the Schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act (steroid.com). This lumped Steroids into the same category as drugs such as LSD, heroin, and cocaine. From the sounds of it, it seems as if congress was pressured into dealing with the situation and made a decision to avoid looking bad. While the law was being discussed in congress, many medical groups such as the DEA, FDA, and AMA were all strongly against the idea of making steroids illegal arguing that “abuse of these hormones does not cause the physical or psychological dependence required scheduling under the control act” (collins). Congress made the choice to ban their nonmedical use because of pressure from the media and because steroids might be harmful to an individual if abused.

There is a huge difference between use and abuse. When abused, almost anything can be dangerous to your health, that doesn’t mean it should be illegal. Take Ibuprofen for example. When the right dosage is consumed, it can have a positive effect on the body by either southing a headache or minimizing swelling somewhere on the body. However, if one were to use an unsafe amount of Ibuprofen, it could be very dangerous and harmful to the body. It’s the same with steroids. When used properly, steroids can produce large amounts of lean muscle, more confidence, and an overall better physique. However, when abused, steroids can also have bad side effects such as liver damage, balding, and raised aggression (Roberts).

Just because something could potentially be harmful to a person’s health, does that give the government the right to make it illegal? Cars are very dangerous to drive. Should they be illegal? Skateboarding is dangerous. Should it be illegal? Skydiving could kill someone in a heartbeat if something went wrong, yet skydiving is perfectly legal. At least steroids have the power to improve the body.

Congress was not successful in stopping the nonmedical use of steroids. What they were successful in doing was creating “a huge black market for the sale of steroids, full of underground laboratories and counterfeits” (steroid.com). If steroids were to become legal, it would strongly minimize the black market sale of them. On top of that, it would make the use of them much safer because they could be inspected by the FDA before being distributed. For that matter, the government could even mark up a big tax on steroids and use that money for further research on the product and how to make them even safer to use. Congress has made a huge mess of the situation by bowing down to the media making anabolic steroids illegal. Instead of trying to stand approved before the media, congress should have actually tried looking into the hard facts about steroids before they decided to ban them.