Athletes ought to be able to select for themselves whether or not they want to us steroids. "Athletes should have the rite to decide for themselves whether the advantages that may be derived from steroids are worth the possible health risks" (Dudley 225). While steroids sometimes have horrible side effects, people should have the right to decide if they want to use them. The three chief reasons steroids should be legal are cigarettes and drinking are legal even thought they kill people, everyone has the rite to make choices about their own bodies and steroids would make sporting events much more entertaining.
             Performance enhancing drugs do always mutate the consumer. "Many athletes do not suffer side effects form steroids" (Orlick 457). Not everyone who uses illegal steroids has an allergic reaction to them. If individuals tested their responses to steroids in a clinical test then they could use them safely. Steroids should be legal because negative side effects do not always happen.
             Tobacco and alcohol kill more people every year than steroids could in ten years. "The claim that the ban on steroids is justified by the concern for athletes is not only paternalistic without justification, but disingenuous" (Gardner 225). Performance enhancing drugs are only outlawed because that is society's traditional position on them. Steroids are not as widely used as cigarettes or liquor so they would have less bad impact than either of them.
             Professional sports would still be fare and much more entertaining if steroids were legal. "The side effects of steroids do not outweigh the positive effects" (Gardner 372). Steroids would lift the bar to unimaginable heights if professional competitors were allowed to use them. Picture home runs hit over a mile, three hundred pound running backs that can run a four flat forty, sports would become almost magic.
             ...