ABSTRACT
As we noted in the previous chapter, although we cannot be sure of the precise level of drug use in modern sport there are grounds for suggesting that the illicit use of drugs by athletes has increased very markedly in the post-war period and, more particularly, since the 1960s. As we also noted in the previous chapter, this means that we need to ask not just why athletes take drugs but, rather, we need to phrase the question in dynamic terms and ask why athletes have, over the past four decades, increasingly used drugs. We also suggested that, in order to explain why athletes have increasingly used performance-enhancing drugs, we need a theory which can account for the growing demand for illicit drugs by athletes. And third, we also suggested that we need to address questions relating to the increasing supply of drugs (and of advice on drug use) to athletes. In this chapter we hope to move some way towards answering these three interrelated questions. One of the fundamental principles which underpins our analysis in this
chapter is that, if we wish to understand why sportsmen and sportswomen have, in recent years, increasingly used performance-enhancing drugs, then it is necessary to examine some of the major changes which have taken place in the structure of sport and sporting competition. However, the increased use of drugs in elite level sport cannot adequately be understood if we limit our analysis merely to changes within the structure of sport itself, for sport – like any other any social activity – is linked to wider social processes in a variety of ways. More specifically, the argument in this chapter is that the increasing use of drugs in sport has been associated with two, largely autonomous, sets of social processes, one within the world of sport and the other within the world of medicine. The central focus of the analysis is therefore on developments in, and changes in the interrelationships between, sport and medicine. This focus also provides the central theme for the next chapter. These two chapters taken together, it is suggested, provide an understanding of the broader social context within which new and more effective performance-enhancing drugs have been developed and used in sport. Let us begin with an analysis of some recent and relevant changes in the structure of medical practice.
