Anti-Doping 'on Steroids': Bigger, stronger, and faster

By Katinka van de Ven and Kyle J.D. Mulrooney

Anti-doping has evolved from a historically independent and un-coordinated movement to what is now a largely coherent and unified crusade, headed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and inclusive of global government, national government and sport authorities. The growth of anti-doping has not been limited to size but the scope has evolved as the WADA has consistently called for and successfully accrued more powerful weapons in the doping fight. While doping controls within sport have been successively ratcheted up (Hoberman, 2012) our attention here is with the recent expansion of anti-doping beyond the boundaries of sport to target the traffickers of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) through the use of criminal justice mechanisms.

The impetus to target suppliers is clearly evidenced by the discourse of the anti-doping movement which has sought to justify and facilitate this expansion. In particular, the WADA and other anti-doping authorities claim that, “the trafficking of doping is linked with organized crime and its sophisticated distribution networks, who find it a particularly high-profit low-risk business” (Annual Report, 2007). Further, Donati (2005) has identified the PIED trade as a ‘mafia-type’ organization and suggested that ‘mafia families’ are in full control of the ‘black market’. Indeed, recent major busts targeting source and supply have nourished the belief that “doping often occurs on a broad scale and involves the participation of well-financed and well-organized individuals and members of the athletes’ entourage” (Annual Report, 2007). Nevertheless, while driving policy, such totalizing claims of organized criminal networks and economically motivated actors have yet to be empirically substantiated and more importantly, contrary evidence exists (ACC, 2011; Paoli & Donati, 2014).

Characterizing of organized crime as ‘mafia-like’ is often based on popular media stereotypes and seem to be the exception rather than the rule (Desroches, 2007). Alternatively, the structure and formation of illegal drug markets are often shaped by a variety of factors including the types of drugs dealt within them, the characteristics of the users served by them, the social structures which sustain them, the cultural context in which the markets exist, and economic and market forces (e.g. technical innovations, drug policies) (Potter, 2009). For example, van de Ven’s current research on PIED traffickers within recreational weight-training (RWT) and body-building (BB) subcultures in the Netherlands and Belgium found that dealers were often not far removed from an individual’s PIED use and that PIED trafficking networks were more likely to exist of “friends” or “friends of friends” (see also Kraska et al., 2010). In addition, economic incentives were found to be a minor motivational factor for selling PIEDs as many traffickers were driven by motivations stemming directly from their ‘cultural embeddedness’.

As bodybuilders form one of the largest using groups in the PIED market (e.g. see Paoli & Donati, 2014) it would not be unreasonable to suggest that RWT and BB sub-cultures are an ideal target market for organized crime, and most of all economically rational dealers. Yet, van de Ven’s research found no indications of organized crime nor that economic incentives were the primary motivator, even on a wholesale level. However, as Møller (2014) and Gleaves (2014) point out, fact is not a necessary pre-requisite in the development of anti-doping policy. Rather much of anti-doping expansion has been at the hands of ‘corrupt idealist’ who advanced untrue claims or truths derived from biased confirmations, justified by what they perceive as the noble cause of anti-doping.

Much of the anti-doping movements’ expansion is endogenous: filling or creating categories. When the weapons at hand prove insufficient and the noble cause is in jeopardy, accepting defeat is not an option. Rather, to achieve legitimacy in the face of failure it is in the best interest of anti-doping to enlarge the system (Rothman, 1971; Foucault, 1977). As Cohen (1985) points out regarding the legitimacy of ‘delinquency professionals’ when rehabilitative penal reform was called into question, this is the dilemma of the rule enforcer (Becker, 1963) in crisis; “be assured, we are doing our job, things are under control, but unless we are given more resources, things will get completely out of hand”. The expansion in focus from the doping practices of athletes to the machination of what is presented as a global criminal mafia that is in control of the PIED market has served to both justify failure and re-enforce the need for a larger and more potent anti-doping movement (Hoberman, 2012). Thus, whether or not organized crime is really involved, labeling it as such gives way to implement harsher measures and sanctions (Mitsilegas, 2003).

The rhetoric of ‘dark figures’ has manifested itself in a number of policy initiatives. For instance, WADA has signed a cooperation agreement with Interpol and the latest version the WADA Code (2015) introduces a number of new anti-doping rule violations focusing on the athlete’s support personnel and expands the powers of investigation. On the global level, the 2005 UNESCO Convention against Doping in Sport calls for states to adopt measures against trafficking by athletes and, to this end, requires them to implement measures to control the production, movement, importation, distribution and sale of PIEDs. Following suit, several countries such as Belgium and France have established specialized anti-doping police units, while others such as Sweden and Denmark have established anti-doping initiatives apart from elite athletics and in the public arena. In addition, various countries now criminalize the use of WADC Prohibited Substances (e.g. Austria, Italy), while others have enacted sport specific legislation that criminalizes the trafficking of WADC Prohibited Substances and Methods (e.g. Norway and Spain).

Much of the anti-doping movements’ expansion is also iatrogenic; mopping up the casualties constructed by the very control processes which were designed to deal with them (Matza, 1968; Lemert, 1981; Mulrooney, 2012). The 2011 Australian Crime Commission (ACC) report found that there is an “extremely broad supply base” for PIEDs and that “criminal individuals and groups are just one section of the broader market”. More importantly the report suggest that, “the ready availability of PIEDs reduces opportunities for organized crime groups to control the market”. However, targeting PIED traffickers with criminal justice mechanisms risks a self-fulfilling prophecy by creating market conditions conducive to more dangerous criminal groups. For example, van de Ven found that the increased law enforcement in Belgium has raised the stakes of participation in the PIEDs market. Subsequently, socio-cultural embedded dealers are being replaced by more ‘market-oriented’ dealers, devoid of the socio-cultural attributes, who calculate the legal penalty as a professional hazard (Maalsté & Panthyusen, 2007). Similar displacement effects have long been well established in other illegal drug markets (e.g. see Dorn & South, 1990; Caulkins & MacCoun, 2003; Decorte, 2010).

The ‘war on drugs’ has left a trail of evidence which suggests that the criminalization of producers, suppliers and users of illegal drugs has not limited consumption nor supply (Costa, 2008). Rather, a zero tolerance drug policy has led to several unintended negative consequences (e.g. a large criminal market, high levels of incarceration, death and disease). While the ‘war on doping’ has yet to reach the extent of the ‘war on drugs’, a similar policy trend can be noted; a shift to law enforcement mechanisms at the expense of public health (Fincoeur, Frenger & Pitsch, 2014; Mulrooney & Van de Ven, 2013), the displacement of criminal activities to other countries with lax regulation (Paoli & Donati, 2014), the presence of more dangerous experimental PIEDs (Kayser et al., 2007; Smith & Stewart, 2008), the exclusion and marginalization of PIED users (Coomber, 2013) and some evidence of a growing criminal black market (Paoli & Donati, 2014). If the current anti-doping regime, dominated by punishment and control, continues unabated these unintended negative consequences are likely to increase.

At a time when many states (e.g. Colorado and Washington) and countries (e.g. Uruguay and Portugal) are re-forming zero-tolerance drug policies in favor of health based models (e.g. see Hughes & Stevens, 2007), anti-doping appears headed in the opposite direction. It is time to rethink our approach to curbing the problem of doping. The idealist nature of anti-doping has caused it to lose sight of proportion. In the crusade to win the war on doping at all costs the anti-doping movement has progressively become bigger, stronger and faster, justifying their means by greater ends, while sacrificing its own principles and harming its own values along the way. We suggest that athletes, sport and society would be best served by an anti-doping movement which looks instead of simply thinking (Gleaves, 2014) and directs its power and attention towards education, prevention, and harm minimization. At the very least, anti-doping should remain within the confines of professional sport where its legitimacy is hotly contested. More importantly, as the history of the anti-doping movement illustrates a proclivity towards the pioneering of policies often steeped in fabrication or exaggeration and an immunity to factual arguments that contradict their cause, national and global governments which seek to address PIEDs consumption as a social problem need not follow its lead (Møller, 2014). Such dogmatic claims need to be replaced with an understanding of the proximate realities of PIED dealing networks on which local drug policies may be built.

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