Doping can be strictly defined as the consumption of any substance (food or medicine) to improve performance. This definition can be applied in a variety of situations, from college students who drink coffee to stay awake to athletes who take steroids to make them stronger. The problem with doping is where you draw the line. Drugs used for doping often have harmful effects on health, both mental and physical. In the short term, these drugs improve performance, but in the long term, they can kill. Making sports a lifestyle rather than a leisure activity has generated fierce competition for athletes to be the best at what they do. Having “natural ability” is no longer enough. You have to work long, hard hours to get an edge over the competition. However, these days, even good training cannot guarantee victory. For athletes and coaches, the drive to be at the top is so great that they look for shortcuts to their end goal: winning. The one who wins is always the one who is remembered in the end; finishing second is worse than finishing last. When this type of attitude becomes prevalent, it is not surprising that they will try every method to cheat the system. Doping has thus become a common practice allowing athletes to gain an advantage in their competitions. Is this a practice that we, as a general public, should accept, or is there something we can do to change the status quo? Doping is a practice that has existed since the time of “Ancient Greek athletes, who supposedly ate herbs, sesame.” seeds, dried figs and mushrooms for this purpose” (Hoberman, 1992, 104). Similarly, athletes readily used drugs such as caffeine and alcohol to enhance their performance...... middle of paper ...... athlete under twenty-four hour surveillance does not is neither feasible nor legal. Only when more accurate testing becomes available will enforcement of drug rules and regulations be possible. As more sophisticated tests come to market, fewer drugs will escape detection. Given the limited ability of current techniques to catch athletes in the act, pressure must be placed on the sporting community to reject doping. Until the sporting community rejects doping as a means to achieve its goals, little can be done to prevent it from happening. Works Cited Barnes, Julian. (2000). “The most difficult test.” The New Yorker. August 21 and 28Eitzen, D. Stanley. (1999). “Sport is fair, sport is bad.” Tree and foul: beyond the myths and paradoxes of sport. Rowman and Littlefield, NY. Hoberman, John M. (1992). “Faster, higher, stronger: a history of doping”. Deadly engines. The Free Press, New York.