Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports: History & Policy

Introduction

To compete and excel is part of human nature. In sporting activities, this drive has always pushed young athletes to perform feats of ever-higher levels of strength, endurance, and speed. Most have achieved glory through relentless effort, physical training, and an iron will to be the best. Unfortunately, the pressure to be the best has also driven some to seek shortcuts to success — primarily through the use of performance enhancing drugs. Most users of drugs in sports justify their behavior by arguing that everyone is doing it and that it is necessary in order to compete. The use of performance enhancing drugs in sports is simply cheating, and no amount of extenuating circumstances justifies it. Moreover, most such drugs carry serious long-term side effects and major health risks for users. The fabulous sums of money to be made in professional sports provide yet another powerful motivation for enhancing performance by any means available. There should therefore be zero tolerance for the use of such drugs in professional as well as amateur sports.

History of Drug Use in Sports

People involved in sports have used performance enhancing drugs since time immemorial. In ancient Greece, for example, extracts of mushrooms and plant seeds are known to have been consumed by athletic competitors to enhance their performance. In the Roman period, when chariot races and gladiator fights were major sporting events, horses as well as gladiators were frequently doped to run faster or fight more ferociously ("History of Drugs in Sport," 2005). While sports lost some of its popularity in the ensuing centuries, it regained prominence in the 19th century following the industrial revolution. By the turn of the century, sports had become a worldwide source of entertainment and gradually achieved the status of big business. The pressure to perform, coupled with the availability of increasingly effective performance enhancing drugs, led to an escalation in drug use by competitors.

The first recorded death from drug use in sports occurred in 1886, when a cyclist died from an overdose of trimethyl. At the 1904 Olympics, marathon runner Thomas Hicks of the United States collapsed after winning the race, having used a mixture of brandy and strychnine to enhance endurance. Despite these incidents, the use of performance enhancing substances by athletes continued to be widely accepted within the international sporting community. Coaches and sports administrators either turned a blind eye to the practice or were active participants. Drug use was reportedly rife at the 1952 Helsinki Games and at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics but was largely ignored at the official level (Ibid.). By the mid-1950s, anabolic steroids had been developed and were massively abused by athletes seeking to transcend the limits of natural ability, often with the active collaboration of coaches. The Soviet Union and Eastern European nations were particularly guilty of tolerating or even promoting performance enhancing drug use in order to assert the supposed superiority of Communist countries in international sports.

Other prominent examples of drug use in sports include Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who was stripped of his gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and banned from track-and-field competition for life after testing positive for steroids. More recently, Major League Baseball players Rafael Palmeiro of the Baltimore Orioles and Ryan Franklin of the Seattle Mariners were suspended for alleged steroid use.

Anti-Doping Initiatives

The first significant international anti-doping initiative was taken in 1960, when a group of twenty-one Western European nations tabled a resolution against the use of doping substances in sport, and individual countries such as France and Belgium enacted national anti-doping laws. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) began to take notice of the problem when cyclist Tommy Simpson died during a televised stage of the 1967 Tour de France, having been found to have used amphetamines. The IOC established a Medical Commission that same year, formally defined "doping," and conducted the first drug tests at the 1968 Mexico Games.

Since then, the IOC has released a comprehensive list of banned substances and developed standardized procedures for drug testing. Following a major drug scandal at the 1998 Tour de France, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was established in 1999. It is an independent international agency responsible for creating unified standards for anti-doping work and coordinating the efforts of sports organizations and public authorities worldwide.

Banned Drugs in Sports

The most commonly abused performance enhancing drugs in sports are anabolic steroids. They are synthetic versions of the male sex hormone testosterone that build muscle and bone mass by stimulating muscle and bone cells to produce new protein. They are widely used by weightlifters, bodybuilders, and track-and-field athletes, and their use is widespread among both professional and college-level sportspeople. Recent drug scandals have revealed that steroid abuse is also common in American professional sports such as baseball. The side effects of steroids are both physical and psychological. Physical effects of steroid abuse include cancer, liver damage, high blood pressure, heart problems, enlarged prostate in males, stunted growth in young adults, impotence, breast growth in males, body hair growth, breast reduction in females, and enlargement of the clitoris. Psychological effects include severe mood swings, bouts of depression, extreme irritability, and aggression ("Anabolic Steroids," 2005).

A wide variety of stimulants are used by athletes as performance enhancing drugs. Among the most commonly abused prohibited stimulants are ephedrine and amphetamines. A complete list of banned stimulants and the conditions under which they are banned is maintained by WADA ("The 2005 Prohibited List," 2004). Ephedrine causes a dramatic increase in central nervous system activity, stimulates metabolism, and improves the force of skeletal muscle contractions. Its side effects include heart problems, elevated blood pressure, headache, loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting, trembling, and troubled breathing. The general side effects of amphetamine — a powerful synthetic stimulant of the central nervous system — are well known and include weight loss, kidney damage, increased risk of seizures, irritability, paranoia, hallucinations, and even psychosis. A particularly dangerous side effect of amphetamine involves the diversion of blood flow away from the skin, increasing the risk of heat stroke. At least two athletes have died due to amphetamine use during competition: British cyclist Tommy Simpson died in 1967 during the Tour de France, and Danish cyclist Knut Jensen died of heat stroke during the 1960 Olympics ("Drugs in Sports: Amphetamines," n.d.).

Diuretics are used by athletes to reduce the concentration of drugs in urine. By inducing frequent urination, they help users evade detection of banned substances in urine tests.

Conclusion

The use of performance enhancing drugs has a long history. The development of more effective drugs in recent years, combined with an excessive emphasis on winning at all costs, has ensured the continued use of such substances among professional as well as school-level athletes. At the same time, the imperative to combat cheating and growing awareness of the serious health consequences of drugs such as steroids have led to increasingly strict crackdowns on drug use in sports. Sports organizations around the world have enacted stringent anti-doping and drug testing rules. Nevertheless, much more needs to be done before drug use in sports can be eliminated or even controlled to a manageable level.

References

"The 2005 Prohibited List." (2004). World Anti-Doping Agency. Retrieved August 13, 2005, from http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/list_2005.pdf

"Anabolic Steroids." Drugs and Sports: Special Section. ESPN. Retrieved August 13, 2005, from http://espn.go.com/special/s/drugsandsports/steroids.html

"Drugs in Sports: Amphetamines." (n.d.). Choices in Sports. Retrieved August 13, 2005, from

"History of Drugs in Sport." (2005). Australian Sports Drug Agency. Retrieved August 13, 2005, from http://www.asda.org.au/media/history.htm

"McCain Introduces Clean Sports Act of 2005." (2005). The Sports Network. May 24, 2005. Retrieved August 13, 2005, from