Essay: The Spirit of Sport and the Medicalisation of Anti-Doping

In September 2012 members from INHDR published a call to WADA to remove recreational drugs like cannabis from the list of banned drugs. This month's commentary, which is an article authored by Professor Mike McNamee and published in Asian Bioethics Review, takes up this issue again. McNamee discusses whether and how the presence of Cannabinoids on the Prohibited List is justified or not. Whereas the call to WADA reasoned that the use Cannabinoids ought not to be thought of as doping and therefore should be removed from the list, McNamee argues on the contrary. In his commentary, McNamee suggests that "Cannabinoids should be retained on the Prohibited List; that its use may be thought of as doping; and that the Spirit of Sport criterion, though vague, is still a defensible criterion for the demarcation of “doping”".

The INHDR wish to give thanks to Asian Bioethics Review and its Editor Alastair Campbell for providing free access to this article 

Read the essay from Mike McNamee on "The Spirit of Sport and the Medicalisation of Anti-Doping"