Athletes and Drug Tests

     I believe that athletes of any level should have to be randomly drug tested throughout the season. For high school athletes, there is a ton of pressure from coaches, fans and parents to succeed and get a scholarship if you want to play in college. Most athlete's dream is to go pro, and do to that you need to go through high school and college and play your very hardest no matter what. Throughout all this stress, student athletes feel like pressure to always do well, so they start doing drugs to keep themselves calm or to enhance their performance. Therefore, high school athletes should have to be drug tested to make sure they are maintaining a healthy lifestyle and not harming or pushing their bodies to such an extent that they get seriously injured. High school students have too much to lose to be stupid and take drugs to improve their performance in order to get a scholarship or get noticed by a D1 or D2 school. They have so much more to offer than just their ability to shoot a basketball or to have a killer fast ball. Students have their character and if they work hard in school, they could easily get a scholarship for their hard work in school instead of their drug enhanced sports performance.

     When athletes reach the college level, things get even more serious. Athletes are now craving a chance to play for the pros and have fans buy jersey's with last names on the back. At this point, athletes will do anything to get to the top. Whether they play far and train excessively or take drugs such as steroids to gain more power in their jump shot or a grand slam hit. College athletes should be drug tested more regularly than high school athletes because of the increase of added pressure to do well to be able to make it to the pros. At this point in their careers, athletes put the most pressure on themselves to do well because they want to make it to the pros. Because of this added pressure from the athletes themselves, they should be drug tested more to continue to make sure that they are keeping up with their health and not causing harm to themselves.

     Lastly, pro athletes should be drug tested the most. In my opinion, they should have weekly drug tests to make sure they are not giving themselves an advantage to increase their chances of making it into the hall of fame for their sport. Professional athletes get the most pressure from the fans. Athletes hate to let all their fans down, so some of them take drugs to make sure that doesn't happen. Professional athletes also have their families and finances to think about. They have to make sure that they take the better deal in order to provide for their families. Athletes at this level get more money than I will ever have in my life. They begin to get greedy on drugs and think they are better than what they are getting paid, so they begin the argue about it and that's what gets them to end up jobless or what gets them caught taking drugs.

     Every level of sport gets more and more competitive and more pressure is put on the athletes to succeed. In order to make sure athletes are staying healthy they should have to take a mandatory drug test to keep everything in check. Drugs in the end will hurt an athlete, not help one.