ABSTRACT
The failure of anti-doping Until recently, the predominant method for detecting anti-doping rule violations (ADRVs) by athletes had been through doping control testing, which typically consists of biological analysis of an athlete’s urine. These tests are most commonly conducted by national anti-doping organisations (NADOs) under rules set out by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The longstanding reliance on such testing is now widely acknowledged to have failed (WADA Working Group, 2013). This failure, as both a strategy of detection (e.g. Badoud et al., 2011; Breymann, 2000) and deterrence (e.g. Bloodworth & McNamee, 2010; Moston, Engelberg & Skinner, 2015a; Overbye, Knudsen & Pfister, 2013), has led to numerous calls for anti-doping legislation to be either relaxed, or abandoned altogether (e.g. Kayser & Broers, 2012; Kayser & Smith, 2008). However, rather than heeding such advice and abandoning the war on doping, anti-doping investigations have instead moved away from a reliance on biological testing to adoption of coordinated investigations that include investigative bodies, such as customs and police agencies, as part of a broader anti-doping investigative framework (WADA, 2011b). The actual degree of coordination varies considerably across countries. In some (e.g. Italy, Belgium), doping has been criminalised, with investigations conducted by police agencies. In France, criminal laws concerned with the trafficking of drugs can be used in anti-doping cases, and in Australia, legislation has been introduced to support anti-doping efforts that falls short of criminalisation, but grants police-like powers to antidoping authorities. Anti-doping is entering a new phase where the powers of bodies such as the police are seen as necessary to breaking the eternal impasse, whereby the cheats are (always) ahead of the testers. However, as most moviegoers know, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’. The powers coveted by anti-doping authorities have a long history or misuse, and ironically, instead of defending the spirit of sport, a nebulous and ill-defined term which is nevertheless one of the key justifications for anti-doping legislation (WADA, 2015g), these new powers may lead to new problems that directly undermine the spirit of sport. The
purpose of this book is to consider doping to be a forensic problem, exploring what might be gained and what might be lost by ‘criminalising’ doping. In this chapter we begin by considering the links between sport and crime, taking in the issue of whether sport shapes or reflects society? This results in the identification of a series of paradoxes, which, at least in part, explain why the serious problem of doping is not taken very seriously at all. We then define doping, and the thorny issue of just how many athletes are doping. Short answer: no-one knows, but there are still some interesting ‘facts’ (and outright guesses), which could help to explain why interpreting that pool of data is such a contentious problem.
