The emergence of drug use as a problem in modern sport: Sport, health and drugs

In the aftermath of the drugs scandal in the 1998 Tour de France, Richard Williams, writing in The Guardian, correctly pointed out that doping is ‘generally felt to be the worst of sporting crimes’ (Guardian, 1 August 1998). This view of the seriousness of doping as an offence is widely shared by many people, both inside and outside sport. For example, the former Olympic gold medallist Sebastian Coe has stated that: ‘We consider this [doping] to be the most shameful abuse of the Olympic ideal: we call for the life ban of offending athletes; we call for the life ban of coaches and the socalled doctors who administer this evil’ (see Donohoe and Johnson, 1986: 1). Calls for such swingeing punishments are by no means unusual in the context of discussions about drug use in sport. In a survey of public attitudes towards drug use in sport, carried out for the Sports Council, over half of those questioned felt that sportspeople who used steroids should be given life bans (Sports Council, 1996a: 3-4). In November 1998, the International Olympic Committee, meeting in London, put forward proposals for consideration at a later meeting in Lausanne, for life bans and fines of up to $1 million (£650,000) for athletes testing positive for steroid use (Independent, 26 November 1998). And in early 2007, the governing body of European athletics proposed life bans from all championships – including the Olympic Games – for any athlete who commits a doping offence that carries a suspension of at least two years (Guardian, 1 March 2007). The demand for such heavy punishments, together with the emotive

language which is often used – note Coe’s reference to the use of drugs as an ‘evil’ – is indicative of the strength of feeling which the issue of drug use in sport often arouses. As the editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine has noted, ‘We get terribly excited about the issue of drugs in sport’ (McCrory, 2007: 1). But why does the use of drugs in sport evoke such strong feelings? Why does it call forth from many people within the world of sport such strong condemnation? And why does it give rise to demands for such swingeing punishments for those found to be using drugs? The

central objective of this chapter is to try to answer these questions, not from a moralistic, but from a sociological perspective.