ABSTRACT
In some respects, public attitudes towards drug use appear curiously ambivalent for, though most people would strongly deprecate both the use of performanceenhancing drugs in sport and ‘drug abuse’ within the wider society, it is almost certainly the case that, in modern western societies, we have come to be more dependent on the use of prescribed drugs than at any previous time in history. As we shall see in Chapter 7, the increasingly widespread acceptance of drugs in everyday life provides an essential part of the backcloth for understanding the use of drugs in sport.
