An Exploratory Study On Effective Ways Of Combating Doping In Professional Sports

Introduction

The prevalence of doping in professional sports is a societal and public health issue. As such, doping prevention should not be an exclusive responsibility of sporting organisations. Due to this, scholars joined the sporting community to enhance their understanding of why sportspeople dope, how they dope, and what should be done to prevent the trend.¹ For instance, in a study to review the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, David Martin, David Baron, and Mark Gold found that doping is a dangerous trend that contradicts the spirit of sports, puts athletes’ health at risk, and promotes unfair competition and undermines societal values such as honesty, integrity, hard work, and so on.² They added that while doping practices have been around for several centuries, advancements in medical technology have increased access to drugs by athletes. Therefore, doping prevention measures should strive to minimise access to banned substances and prescribe sanctions that deter athletes and sporting stakeholders in their pursuit of performance-enhancing drugs. In this regard, this paper explores the criminalisation of doping alongside other anti-doping strategies in professional sports.

Research question

The goal of this paper is to answer the following research question:

- What are the effective ways of addressing doping problem in professional sports?

Basically, doping refers to the use of banned substances in sport to enhance performance. Throughout the history of professional sports, authorities have detected many cases of doping around the world.³ The first case was detected at the 1904 Olympic Games when an athlete was injected with strychnine to assist them with strength and speed.⁴ While doping has continued for over a century, the world was shocked when Lance Armstrong confessed that he had been using performance-enhancing drugs for most of his cycling career. From 1999 to 2005, Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times in a row.⁵ Armstrong was charged with the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in 2012 by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, leading to his being stripped of all his Tour de France victories and a lifetime ban from competitive.⁶ Following the Armstrong doping scandal and other cases, the IOC, through WADA, instituted stricter regulations on doping⁷. Despite this, systematic doping by states such as Russia remains a complex issue.

Consequently, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of current anti-doping regulations, and whether criminalising doping in sports could deter athletes and other doping perpetrators from the vice. It then moves on to a critical examination of the anti-doping system as a whole, as well as the authorities involved. For the purposes of this paper, doping shall be understood to mean violations of Articles 2.1-2.6 of the WADA Code.⁸ For instance, Article 2.1 section 2.1.1 states that "it is the Athletes’ personal duty to ensure that no Prohibited Substance enters their bodies." Athletes are responsible for any Prohibited Substance or its Metabolites or Markers found to be present in their Samples."⁹ While doping is a serious sporting offence, the paper argues that there are many ways to confront it other than criminalisation. For instance, anti-doping sanctions should deter such behaviour and promote ethics and fair play within sporting competitions. The rest of the paper is organised from methodology to analysis and discussion, and conclusion sections.

Methodology

The research adopted a critical literature review approach to achieve the research objective of determining whether doping in sport should be criminalised and other ways of combating the practice. It identified multiple and diverse sources from past studies, reports and regulations to determine various arguments for and against the criminalisation of doping in sport. In this method, the researcher was free to select from an array of strategies and procedures for identifying, recording, and making meaning in relation to the research objectives.¹⁰ The researcher found several studies that were relevant to the study. These studies were critically assessed and the findings were reported as follows.

Analysis and discussion

As sports play a vital role in physical and mental education and the promotion of international cooperation, doping adversely impacts on the sport’s image¹¹. In addition, doping has health consequences on the athlete. Thus, doping in sports is banned for moral, competitive, and health reasons. Martin, Baron, and Gold suggested that athletes could enhance their performance using different types of training routines, diets, and hard work, which would uphold the spirit of fair competition in sports.¹² Through hard work and modern sports science, intervention could help athletes and sports teams achieve their objectives. The pressure to win has led to the emergence of doping as an organised, formidable industry. With the increase in prize money and endorsement rewards, the desire to use performance-enhancing techniques among athletes has also increased¹³. Also, millions of dollars are available to athletes and sporting organisations for winning sporting events. As a result, unethical pharmacists, medical professionals, and coaches have emerged who engage in schemes to give their teams an unfair advantage, sometimes without the athlete's consent.¹⁴

Despite the existence of punishment for dopers, many people insist that there is a need for new approaches to combat doping. For example, some radical commentators have argued for athletes to be allowed to dope. That is, as technology and the safety of performance-enhancing techniques increase, authorities should consider allowing performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) as long as they are safe and accessible to all athletes.¹⁵ On the other hand, others have argued for a total ban and criminalisation of doping in sports on the basis of fraud¹⁶. They argued that criminalisation could act as a major deterrent to doping than the current sanctions. It will make doping more expensive for the athlete. It could also address the public concern in relation to corruption in addressing doping cases while serving as justice to all the stakeholders involved. Revelations of doping often elicit moral outrage. The use of performance-enhancing substances is outlawed in sports because of the potential for them to offer an athlete an unfair edge over other competing athletes.¹⁷ For example, by using PEDs, Armstrong may have cheated other cyclists out of a first-place finish at the Tour de France. On the other hand, Armstrong claims that PEDs were widely used in professional cycling during the time of his career.¹⁸

The Current Anti-Doping Sanctions

The majority of global sports prohibit the use of performance-enhancing drugs by professional athletes. They argue that these drugs give the participants an unfair advantage over their competition. In addition, the drugs are detrimental to athletes’ health and contrary to the ‘spirit of sport’.¹⁹ Due to this, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was formed to provide legal and regulatory remedies towards the prevention of doping in professional sports and ensure that the spirit of sport is upheld at all times. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) defines the ‘spirit of sport’ as ‘the essence of Olympism, the pursuit of human excellence, through the dedicated perfection of each person’s natural talents. It is how we play true.’ Since WADA was formed, there have been ongoing efforts to reduce, if not eliminate, the use of PEDs in sports, yet doping cases continue to emerge and issues persist. More than 1200 athletes were surveyed at the 2011 World Athletics Championships about their use of PEDs. Astounding results emerged after six years of silence.²⁰ 44 per cent admitted to using performance-enhancing substances in the past year. However, only 1-2 per cent of samples are found to be positive, and the majority of doping is discovered years later.²¹

The World Anti-Doping Code (Code) is the foundational document that serves as the framework for anti-doping policies, rules, and regulations worldwide and was first published just before the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.²² The Code defines doping, as well as the sanctions that apply. It also includes the WADA Prohibited List, which is a yearly list of substances and methods that are prohibited in sports. The Code is intended to promote consistency and guarantee that all athletes are held to the same standards.²³ As part of the 2021 Code, first-time offenders face a four-year ban.²⁴ A third ADRV nearly always means a lifetime ban.²⁵ In some particularly serious circumstances, such as trafficking involving athletes under the age of eighteen, lifetime ineligibility can be enforced even after the first offence.²⁶ While these sanctions have helped to reduce the incidence of doping in some jurisdictions, they have been insufficient to deter athletes from doping completely.²⁷ Furthermore, the sanctions are inadequate to convince the public that athletes’ achievements are within the spirit of sport.²⁸ To determine whether this is the case, studies suggested improvements to the current system.²⁹ For instance, in a study titled ‘From fighting the bad, to protecting the good’, Qvarfordt and others suggested involvement of all sporting stakeholders could enhance the legitimacy of WADA anti-doping strategies.³⁰

Criminalisation

Criminalising doping could mean that it would be a criminal offence to use one of the substances listed in the Code. It should be noted that some of the drugs listed by WADA are already illegal under national criminal law in different countries.³¹

Arguments for criminalising doping

Whereas it is unethical to cheat, many athletes still take advantage of laxed rules to gain unfair advantage in competition.³² According to Sumner, success in sports should be linked to the rules of that particular sport, and all athletes should adhere to the rules.³³ Since athletes are members of law-abiding societies, violation of sporting rules undermines the society itself. Drug taking is ethically indefensible as athletes’ proper abilities and capabilities in that sport remain hugely untested. Though WADA has developed multiple measures and sanctions to prevent cheating in sports, studies suggest that the WADA model does not assure equality in the supervision of athletes and concerned stakeholders.³⁴ The inequality arises from the differences in the financial abilities of sporting organisations. Further, studies suggest that in a harm-reductionist model, the athlete’s psychological motivation to win will always exceed the existing permitted boundaries.³⁵ As such, the cost and benefits of doping sanctions should deter an athlete from attempting doping. Based on these arguments, criminalisation will enhance equality of supervision and deter athletes and sporting organisations.

[...]

¹ David M. Martin, David A. Baron, and Mark S. Gold, "A Review of Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Professional Sports and Their Spread to Amateur Athletics, Adolescents, and Other At-Risk Populations," Journal of Addictive Diseases 25, no. sup1 (2006)

² Ibid.

³ Luke Bradshaw, "An ancient history of doping at the Olympics," Culture Trip, last modified July 28, 2016

⁴ Frank Daumann, Anne C. Wunderlich, and Benedikt Römmelt, "Doping: never-ending story? Never-ending glory!," Sport in Society 18, no. 10 (2015)

⁵ Sara Kettler, ‘9 Doping Scandals That Changed Sports’ (HISTORY, 2022).

⁶ ‘Lance Armstrong Receives Lifetime Ban And Disqualification Of Competitive Results For Doping Violations Stemming From His Involvement In The United States Postal Service Pro-Cycling Team Doping Conspiracy | U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA)’ (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), 2012).

⁷ B. Houlihan et al., "The world anti-doping agency at 20: Progress and challenges," International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 11, no. 2 (2019)

⁸ These relate to contamination of an athlete’s sample with banned substances, the usage or possession of banned substances, evasion of sample collections, failures to report location and manipulation of samples.

⁹ WADA, World Anti-Doping Code 2021 (n.d)

¹⁰ Hannah Snyder, "Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines," Journal of Business Research 104 (2019)

¹¹ Martin, Baron, and Gold discusses the impact of doping in sport

¹² Martin, Baron and Gold.

¹³ Daumann, Wunderlich, and Römmelt explains motivations for doping in sports

¹⁴ B. Houlihan et al., "The world anti-doping agency at 20: Progress and challenges,"

¹⁵ Martin, Baron, and Gold

¹⁶ G. P. Stevens, "The winner takes it all! Reflections on the world anti-doping code and the possible criminalisation of doping in sport," De Jure Law Journal 42, no. 2 (2013)

¹⁷ ‘Drugs In Sport’ (Healthdirect.gov.au, 2021).

¹⁸ Henry Robertshaw, ‘Lance Armstrong allowed to use ‘everyone was doping’ as defence in $100m fraud trial’ Cycling Weekly (2017).

¹⁹ I. Palmi et al., ‘The Unethicality Of Doping In Sports’ (2019) 170 La Clinica Terapeutica.

²⁰ Owen Gibson, ‘A Truly Independent WADA Should Have The Power To Sanction Sports And Nations’ The Guardian (2015).

²¹ Millán Aguilar et al., "Analysis of the Doping Control Test Results in Individual and Team Sports from 2003 to 2015," 2018

²² ‘Wereld Anti-Doping Programma’ (Dopingautoriteit.nl).

²³ Millán Aguilar et al., "Analysis of the Doping Control Test Results in Individual and Team Sports from 2003 to 2015," 2018

²⁴ World Anti-Doping Code 2021, 10.2.

²⁵ World Anti-Doping Code 2021, 10.9.1.2.

²⁶ World Anti-Doping Code 2021, 10.3.3.

²⁷ Claire Sumner, ‘The Spirit Of Sport: The Case For Criminalisation Of Doping In The UK’ (2017) 16 The International Sports Law Journal.

²⁸ Claire Sumner, ‘The Spirit Of Sport: The Case For Criminalisation Of Doping In The UK’ (2017) 16 The International Sports Law Journal.

²⁹ Cornelia Blank et al., "Doping Sanctions in Sport: Knowledge and Perception of (Legal) Consequences of Doping—An Explorative Study in Austria," Journal of Risk and Financial Management 14, no. 12 (2021)

³⁰ Anna Qvarfordt et al., "From fighting the bad to protecting the good: Legitimation strategies in WADA’s athlete guides," Performance Enhancement & Health 7, no. 1-2 (2019)

³¹ Cornelia Blank et al., "Doping Sanctions in Sport: Knowledge and Perception of (Legal) Consequences of Doping—An Explorative Study in Austria

³² Anna Qvarfordt et al., "From fighting the bad to protecting the good: Legitimation strategies in WADA’s athlete guides,"

³³ Claire Sumner, "The spirit of sport: the case for criminalisation of doping in the UK," The International Sports Law Journal 16, no. 3-4 (2017)

³⁴ Millán Aguilar et al

³⁵ Claire Sumner, "The spirit of sport: the case for criminalisation of doping in the UK,