Rethinking the management of drugs in sport

Abstract

The management of drugs in sport has been dominated by the policy of anti-doping. Experience with this policy over the last 50 years or so suggests there may be more effective ways to manage the role of drugs in sport. This paper looks at the lessons that can be drawn from the anti-doping policy experiment towards developing a ‘second generation’ of policies to manage the use of drugs in sport. The aims of anti-doping policy are summarised as the ‘elimination of doping to protect the integrity of sport’, with the latter discussed as the aim of anti-doping and the former the method. The integrity of sport is discussed in terms of protecting the ideological or moral integrity of sport, and protecting the financial integrity of sport. The elimination of doping is considered in terms of the arguments surrounding the detection of drugs and the imposition of sanctions on drug users, both of which underpin much anti-doping policy. We argue that the management of drug use in sport needs to be fundamentally reconsidered in three key ways: (i) there needs to be a much clearer rationale justifying the aims, objectives and purpose of anti-doping policy; (ii) the inefficiencies of the doping and anti-doping industries need to be eliminated with the objective of creating public good; and (iii) detection and sanction technologies need to be reconceptualised to help policy-makers manage better the use of drugs in sport.