Many athletes are willing to do anything to become professional. One of the easiest ways to enhance natural abilities is through performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs. PEDs are substances used by athletes to increase their performance. The use of PEDs in athletic competitions can date back to ancient Greece. Athletes use PEDs to run faster, jump higher, and recover at a faster pace. Many athletes are pressured to use PEDs by coaches or managers and are not fully informed about the harmful health problems that can result from taking performance-enhancing drugs. A growing question is whether performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. I believe that in any professional sport, the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes should continue to be banned because this rule will help prevent athletes from abusing these harmful drugs. Steroids may seem harmless to the uninformed user, but they actually have harmful side effects. According to the article “News Looks at Relationship Between Steroids and Heart-Related Deaths,” published by the New York Daily News, “Study (presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago on November 12, 2006) shows that deaths are jumped from 476 from 1980-1992 to 987 from 1993-2005 Overall, between 1980 and 2005, 1,463 young athletes died” (NY Daily News). , Radley Balko, senior writer and investigative reporter at the Huffington Post, participated in a debate about steroids in 2008, said: "As we have seen with government bans on steroids consensual activity - from drinking to gambling, from cocaine to prostitution - the bans not only don't work, they make the activity in question... front and center... if drugs were made legal, it would contribute to wider use of PEDs among athletes. If the use of these harmful drugs were to increase, we would see many more health problems and possible deaths among athletes. We may also see an increase in the use of these drugs by adolescents. For these reasons alone I believe performance-enhancing drugs should remain illegal for the well-being of athletes. Performance-enhancing drugs should continue to be banned from professional sports because they have side effects that athletes may not be aware of, there is a disadvantage for athletes using PEDs, and it is unfair to previous record-holding athletes . Some individuals may disagree and argue that we should lift the ban so we can monitor it more safely. If the ban on performance-enhancing drugs were to be lifted, who knows what will be the next illegal drug to become legal.