Should performance enhancing drugs be banned in sports?

About 30 percent of college and professional athletes use anabolic steroids to enhance their performance in their sport. But only a very few amounts get suspended and caught for using them. This brings up the question, should steroids and other performance enhancers be banned. Even though so many people are taking PEDs and not getting caught they should still be banned because it ruins people’s bodies and because of their competitive advantage.
One case of why they should definitely be banned is how steroids can ruin athletes’ bodies. For example according to Biology Reference taking an anabolic steroid can cause serious medical issues including damage to the kidneys, liver, and heart. It can also damage your mental state which includes depression, delusions, and violent tendencies. Also according to Nationwide Children’s, there is a chance that people can get addicted to one of these substances, especially if you take a lot of it when you are an adolescent. So why would they not ban steroids if it can cause serious damage to athletes’ bodies when overall every sport wants each player to be healthy and play. Steroids don’t improve your health even though bodybuilders who take steroids look like they are healthy, but they are just taking a chance for increased muscle mass.
Professional athletes have a role in society. Although it might not be a political or presidential role, many kids and adults look at professional athletes as someone they aspire to be. And if these drugs are used in sports without any consequences it will make those kids and adults think that one of the necessary things that must be done if you want to be a professional athlete is to take these drugs. Because if these drugs get unbanned there will definitely be a spike in these drug use.
Another reason is that these drugs create a competitive advantage. Although if these drugs are legal and every athlete takes them then there will but no competitive advantage. But that is not the case because some athletes aren’t willing to sacrifice their health for a competitive advantage. Therefore if they get unbanned it will create an even bigger gap in players who are taking these drugs and who aren’t. Also, there will be guaranteed more cases of damage to these athlete’s bodies because more people are taking it. Which will scare the more athletes and create an even bigger competitive advantage gap. Although in UFC or Ultimate Fighting Championship there was a time where fighters would take all kinds of drugs to beat their opponent. For example back then they could have the fighters weigh in at like 170 and one be ripped with veins popping out of his muscles and then have a skinny guy fight him. And this did happen. Although fighting is a sport based on entertainment. It is fun as a fan to see to ripped guys through each other apart but there are still those skinny guys that refuse to take anything. That’s why now the UFC is very strict about what you can and can’t take as a fighter. And the fighters who were ripped when they didn’t have these rules are getting smaller and smaller and facing a lot of long term damage from this.
As a fan of many sports, I enjoy watching the talents of professional athletes go head to head to see who can come out on top. When there is a certain dominance in one aspect of a sport I think it ruins the competitiveness.
All in all, athletes should be held to a standard of fairness and should not have a competitive advantage over their competitors. At school, no teacher would ever tell you to cheat on a test. But when people do cheat it creates a gap between the person that cheated and all the people that didn’t.