Economic analysis to an issue facing the sports industry

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Sports

Document 1

However, doping in the sports industry is not a new challenge in the society, in the ancient day's plants and herbs were used to increase the performance of the athletes. Sometimes these herbs were given to the injured athlete to enhance endurance. Traditional methods were used to improve the athlete's speed and to numb their pain during the competition, this however increased their performance. In recent times doping is still a challenge in the sports industry; the only thing that is different is that the techniques of doping practices have improved and that professional personnel are nowadays involved. (Mitten, 2016 p87-92) Doping is an issue that affects the sports industry a great deal; it is a global challenge to the International sports federations, doping has widely spread among the athletes, it has become a significant problem to the sports industry.

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This behavior has led to the youth abusing steroids to look good (Mitten, 2016 p87-92). Doping has, however, become a question of the ethical standards of the athletes; it also questions the legal aspect of engaging in the act. Doping has increasingly become a behavior that has been adopted by adolescent and teens in the sports industry due to the reward that comes with winning in the completion; the rewards has attracted people to engage in unethical and unacceptable ways to receive the financial gain. Doping focuses on justifying the outcome while putting a blind eye on the means, placing the society moral standards and practice in question. This portrays that the ultimate goal of the athletes is to win the money without deserving it, the value of hard work, in this case, is under looked and cheating has been regarded as not a bad thing (Yesalis, 2002 p1 -7).

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The use of doping in the sports industry indicates that the coach did not prepare well his or her team-leading him or her to engage in unethical means to win. World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has actively been involved in testing international athletes; this is done under stringent supervision to enhance untampered results. Harsh punishments have however been set for athletes who engage in doping this is to discourage other athletes and the youth that doping is not good, and if found to have chemically enhanced your performance, the reward is fatal than to work hard and improve in the skills and getting their genuine results. The black market of distributing doping programs has expanded to almost every corner of the world.

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The drugs nowadays are easily accessible and available to the local people, this has made it possible for the athletes to access doping products without fear of being caught, all they need is a technique and skill to enhance their unethical means. This shortcoming has led to more sports personality to engage in performance enhancing behaviour. Advocacy and lobbying in the society can help deal with this menace; the youth should be informed and educated on the importance self-esteem to deal with peer pressure that comes with unrealistic expectations from the mainstream media and social media (Mitten, 2016 p87-92) Doping substances are always overused, the users are meant to take more steroids than the body can handle. They tend to overdose to give a credible performance, this practice however, has its side effects on someone’s health.

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It can cause the liver to function abnormally, kidney to develop unwanted tumours, it causes reproductive system to stop working, abnormal bone growth, cancer, glucose intolerance, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and also developing psychiatric symptoms, in the long run, reducing lifespan. These conditions are fatal and can lead to death; it is essential that those in the sports industry to be aware and avoid practices that can cost their entire life. In the modern society, individuals can do anything to gain fame and money; people go out of their way to achieve the two, these selfish values have increased the popularity of doping making it look like it is acceptable as long as you get what you want. This, however, raises health risks and behaviour problems in the society.

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Advocacy is needed to create awareness, hard work, patience, and genuine characters should be appreciated together with truth these will significantly impact on people attitude and behaviour modification. Besides WADA needs to invest more money in setting up more laboratories and equipping them sufficiently to be able to perform all the tests required for all the athletes to scare away any individuals who want to compromise the process (Mitten, 2016 p87-92) Sports personality must stand in the gap and serve as role models in the society rebuking doping and advocating for a free doping sports society; this will act as an excellent example to others by appreciating efforts made by others to achieve in sports. Very harsh punishments should also be imposed to those sportspersons that will be found to be using substances to enhance their performance in competition; however, those individuals who participate in the competition free from doping should be appreciated.

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Yesalis CE. History of doping in sport. In: Bahrke MS, Yesalis CE, editors.  Performance enhancing substances in sport and exercise.  Champaign: Human Kinetics; (2002):1–7. As noble a goal as this is, it has little to do with the reality of the modern sports world. Athletes are rewarded for winning at virtually every level of competition. Second place is viewed as the "first loser". A coach's job security is directly related to his team's success, not that they are simply "fighting well". Given this reality, it is not surprising that athletes and coaches will sacrifice and risk a great deal in order to obtain a competitive edge and enhance performance at all costs. Today no sport is spared the cloud of cheating using illegal performance enhancement.

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Driven by the millions of dollars now routinely available for winning a sporting event, unethical pharmacists, medical professionals, trainers and sports organizations have worked secretly, and at times without their athletes' consent, to develop sophisticated doping programs where performance is optimized, often at the risk of the athletes' health. Now, these same doping programs are moving out of the professional sports market to our youth and other at-risk populations at alarming rates. There are several hundred forms of known and potentially more unknown doping substances and techniques abused by professional athletes worldwide. This review will provide a summary of the history of doping in sport, and focus on the most commonly abused substances: anabolic androgenic steroids, human growth hormone (hGH) and erythropoietin (EPO).

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These athletes suffered severe medical abnormalities, including premature death (5). The world became acutely aware of the extent and benefits of doping in sport when Ben Johnson's gold medal was stripped in the 1988 Seoul Olympics for using the steroid stanazalol. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) medical commission had established a list of prohibited substances in 1967 and introduced anti-doping testing of athletes in the 1972 Munich Games. It was clear at this point that doping did work and, if gone undetected, would win gold medals. East German scientists from the state-run doping programs at Kreischa and Leipzig, who were disgraced in their own country, where now in demand in Asia, former Soviet Block nations and sports organizations worldwide that wanted to promote their status.

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However, subsequent government investigations and former players revealed that steroid abuse was a problem in the League, which resulted in a limited steroid testing program. In 2003, another significant event in the understanding of the institutional nature of doping occurred. A syringe was anonymously sent to a WADA-accredited laboratory in Los Angeles that contained tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), a "designer" steroid that was not known and not on the current WADA prohibited list, made specifically to avoid detection by modern anti-doping technologies. This led to a series of investigations resulting in the indictment and subsequent conviction of individuals running a performance-enhancing program for professional athletes at the BALCO pharmacy in San Francisco. In May 2006, Spanish police arrested five people and seized a variety of banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood-doping supplies at a Madrid doping clinic.

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Today perform- ance-enhancing programs and drugs are not the exclusive province of elite athletes, but have spread to health clubs, high schools and other at-risk populations, creating an over $1. 4 billion US dollar industry that is growing daily as new compounds are synthesized and marketed (8). KNOWN DOPING SUBSTANCES AND TECHNIQUES There are literally hundreds of known doping substances and an equal number of designer, veterinary, and yet to be identified drugs and techniques abused in sports today. The 2006 WADA list of prohibited substances includes the following major categories: anabolic agents (i. e. ); stimulants (amphetamines, ephedrine, cocaine, etc. ); narcotics (morphine, oxycodone, etc. ); cannabinoids (marijuana, hashish), and glucocorticosteroids (allowed externally but not internally). WADA also lists prohibited methods, including enhancement of oxygen transfer (blood doping, efaproxial, etc.

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), chemical and physical manipulation (tampering or substitution of sample) and gene doping. He and his colleagues contacted Ciba Pharmaceuticals in pursuit of synthetic testosterone. Ciba had conducted a number of studies on the use of synthetic testosterone in pain patients and the physically disabled. This resulted in the development of danazol, which rapidly became a doping substance abused by weightlifters (9). Although steroids were first reported to be abused in Olympic sports in the 1950s, the abuse of steroids in young male non-Olympic athletes was not reported until the 1980s (10). As demand increased, trafficking steroids at schools and gyms became common and the use of steroids was seen in younger and younger populations (11). , steroids and EPO or hGH. Added to this, a new problem has emerged with the manufacture of "counterfeit" drugs by unregulated pharmacies, which are tainted with impurities, contain no medication, or are potentially harmful.

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Now, more so than in the past, when an athlete buys performance-enhancing drugs from a friend or at the gym, he will never know exactly what is being bought or taken. Steroids are sold on the internet ranging in price from $50 to $200 per regime, depending upon the type of steroid and doping program selected. These black market steroids may or may not contain any medication at all or may contain harmful material. Most human growth hormone used in medicine and diverted to sports doping is now obtained by recombinant technology, and is simply referred to as hGH (but it may also appear as rhGH or HGH). Unfortunately, cadaver extracts of pituitary hGH may still be in circulation. It has been reported that a Russian coach was arrested and, upon searching his apartment in Moscow, over 1000 cadaver pituitary glands were found preserved in a large container (13).

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Moreover, the problem of counterfeit drugs also exists with hGH: illegal pharmaceutical manufacturers are now flooding the black market with hGH vials of unknown quality and safety. It is estimated that an eightweek performance enhancement regime of pharmaceutical grade rhGH will cost about $2000, well out of the range of an adolescent and the majority of weekend athletes. Using hGH may lead to life-threatening health conditions, especially since some estimates report that athletes who use hGH to enhance performance are taking 10 times the therapeutic dosage. Some reported side effects of hGH are abnormal bone growth, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cardiomyopathy, glucose intolerance, colonic polyps, decreased life span, and cancer (14). Since hGH is a naturally-produced hormone and rhGH is similar in structure, testing for doping with rhGH has been a technical challenge only recently solved by WADAcertified laboratories.

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Routine blood tests for hGH available at clinical laboratories will not differentiate hGH from rhGH and are of no value in determining if an adolescent or weekend athlete is doping. Erythropoietin (EPO) EPO is a naturally occurring hormone produced by the kidney that stimulates red blood cell production in the bone marrow in response to low circulating oxygen levels. As with steroids and hGH, doping with EPO is often injected in supernormal doses that could cause increased blood viscosity, deep vein and coronary thromboses, cerebral thromboses, pulmonary embolism, arrhythmias, stroke and death. It has been estimated that 20 European cyclists have died since 1987 due to abuse of EPO, making it one of the most deadly doping agents. The genetically engineered form of EPO is indistinguishable from naturally occurring EPO, making routine blood testing useless to determine if an athlete is doping.

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At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the Australian WADA-certified laboratory first launched a sophisticated anti-doping test for EPO that required both urine and a blood sample. Over 300 tests were performed for EPO for the first time in Olympic history and no positives were reported. However, it is interesting to note that this study found that 25% of those reporting using steroids were not athletes. They abused steroids to improve personal appearance, a problem that continues today and is fueled by the media and "anti-aging" marketing. A review of published reports concluded that 3-12% of high school students used steroids, and of the group of abusers about half were adolescent females (16,17). Contrary to popular belief and supported by Pope's early findings, steroid abuse is not exclusively related to performance enhancement.

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DuRant et al reported in 1993 that steroid abuse in ninth graders was associated with use of cocaine, injected drugs, alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes and smokeless tobacco (18). Their motivation may not be athletic enhancement, but rather cosmetic and body shaping purposes. To maintain youthful appearances, weekend athletes may experiment with hormones encouraged by "anti-aging" marketing, while adolescent females desirous of the Zlong, lean female media images of "adult women" may use steroids and hGH to reduce fat and increase muscle tone (22). DISCUSSION Modern sports and the media's misplaced fixation on fame, fortune and winning at all costs have unintentionally created a growing market for doping substances. These substances, once only abused by elite athletes, are clearly spreading into our schools and health clubs worldwide.

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They are being accepted by a whole new generation of young customers who see reports daily in the newspapers of sports icons accused of abusing drugs only to continue playing, breaking records and claiming fortunes. REFERENCES 1.  Bamberger M. Yaeger D. Over the edge.  Sports Illustrated.  Landry GL. Kokotaio PK. Drug screening in athletic settings.  Curr Probl Pediatr. [PubMed] 5.  Hsu AR. Barnholt KE. Grundmann NK, et al. Sildenafil improves cardiac output and exercise performance during acute hypoxia, but not normoxia.  Appl Physiol. [PubMed] 10.  Buckley WE. Yesalis CE. Friedl KE, et al. Estimated prevalence of anabolic steroids use by male adolescents. Pery PJ. Anabolic steroids: a review for the clinician.  Sports Med. [PubMed] 13.  Sonksen PH. Anabolic-androgenic steroid use among 1,010 college men.  Physician and Sports Medicine.

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