ABSTRACT
In the United Kingdom, most work concerning use of drugs in gyms is not only detached from the national anti-doping organization, it has also taken a completely different approach, focusing on harm reduction rather than surveilling, controlling and eradicating drug use. In Chapter 13 the author discusses the harm reduction approach in the UK, the aim being to compare alternatives and discuss pros and cons of the different methods. Whereas prevention of drugs in gyms in the UK is viewed as a public health issue, the Danish strategy evolved out of the fight against doping in elite sports. Shifting the perspective to view non-competitive steroid use as a public-health problem, entails that the interventions, campaigns and rules put in place ought to be guided by public-health ethics rather than sport and “fair play” ethics. These are obviously not the same, and the author analyzes the resulting differences in approaches in Chapter 13. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the possibility to further reduce prevalence of use for a drug where prevalence is low to begin with.
