Poll: Not All Americans Oppose PEDs In Sports

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Lance Armstrong was the latest in a string of high-profile athletes to have an otherwise stellar career tarnished by performance enhancing drug use. The collective public reaction to Armstrong’s admissions during an interview with Oprah Winfrey seemed to point to a public that almost unanimously opposes the use of PEDs in sports. But, a recent poll paints a different picture.

A poll of 400 Internet users conducted by THELAW.TV shows that a sizable group of Americans think performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sports, with varying degrees of permissiveness depending on the level of the sport.

THELAW.TV polled Americans about whether PEDs should be allowed in five different levels of competition.

Among the repondents:

• 20% believe that PEDs should be allowed in professional sports
• 18.75% believe that PEDs should be allowed in amateur sports
• 12.25% believe that PEDs should be allowed in Olympic sports
• 11.25% believe that PEDs should be allowed in college sports
• 6.5% believe that PEDs should be allowed in high school sports

“These numbers show that even with legal issues that seemingly everyone agrees on, there are still different opinions,” says attorney Brian Albert of legal information website THELAW.TV. “Some people clearly believe that the integrity of professional sports would not be compromised through the use of performance enhancing drugs. Yet most of those same people do not want younger athletes using these drugs.”

Only 17 of the survey respondents — 4.25% — believe that PEDs should be allowed at all levels of sport.

Aside from Lance Armstrong, prominent athletes like baseball players Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun have recently made headlines for the alleged use of banned substances. Major League Baseball has the toughest drug testing program in American professional sports. In 2012, six players were suspended for PED use, including All-Star Game MVP Melky Cabrera of the San Francisco Giants.

THELAW.TV’s survey was conducted using a demographically balanced internet-based survey of 400 American adults and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.9 percent.

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