The Sports Doping Market: Understanding Supply and Demand, and the Challenges of Their Control
Abstract
This book examines sports doping from production and distribution, detection and punishment. Detailing the daily operations of the trade and its gray area as a semi-legal market, the authors cover important issues ranging from athletes most at risk to the role of organized crime in sports doping, and whether sports governing bodies are enabling the trade. Challenges for law enforcement and legislation, and efforts to control PED use in the worldwide sports community and among aspiring athletes, are also discussed in depth. The book's extensive research:∗ Estimates the demand for performance-enhancing products. ∗ Traces the route from legal substances to illegal uses. ∗ Identifies classes of suppliers and their methods of operation. ∗ Tracks typical distribution systems from suppliers to users. ∗ Examines the economics of the market: prices, profits, revenue. ∗ Assesses the state of anti-doping law enforcement efforts.Starting with an unprecedented case study in Italy, the intense scrutiny from one pivotal country yields a potential template for research and policy on a world scale. Doping and Sport makes solid contributions to the work of researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in corruption, drug trafficking, and criminal networks; researchers in sports science and public health; and policymakers. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. All rights are reserved.
Chapters (8)
In this chapter we briefly review the literature on doping and anti-doping to illustrate the value added of the present study beyond Italy’s borders. We conclude that, while the demand for doping products has been addressed in numerous studies, the supply side of the market has hardly been examined yet. The lack of research of the supply side of the market also reflects the fact these activities have not been investigated systematically by many law enforcement agencies and, hence, the “supply” of research-worthy criminal justice data is also scant. As such criminal justice data are uniquely available in Italy, a study of the supply of doping products in Italy may be considered illustrative—or at least indicative—of what remains unexplored elsewhere, even if similarities and differences must be ascertained empirically in future projects.
In the chapter we also consider the international policy context to demonstrate the policy relevance and timeliness of the study and, on the basis of literature review and current anti-doping policies, we then single out the study conceptual framework. We conceptualize doping in terms of a market, with its demand and supply. A market approach is “bread and butter” in the field of illegal drugs and other illegal goods and services but, to our knowledge, but has not yet been applied to doping. In particular, we conceptualize the doping market as a semi-illegal market, at least from the point of view of criminal law. We stress that the legal status of doping products suffers the burden and ambiguity of contextual specificity; that is, in some contexts, the products, including their supply, are “legal” and in others they are not.
In this second chapter we provide context for the analysis of the supply of doping products, by considering the products available in Italy and by assessing, at least roughly, the demand. Despite the lack of specific historical or cross-country studies, we draw from the assumption that the use of doping substances and methods in Italy has followed the same broad lines of development known from studies in other countries. On the basis of NAS seizure data and anti-doping investigations we show that the entire palette of doping substances and methods is currently available on the Italian market. Exploiting the available data, we then estimate the size of the two main groups of users of doping products, athletes and body-builders, and demonstrate that a significant minority of the nearly 14 million Italians, aged 15 and older, who regularly engage in sports has consumed doping products at least occasionally, generating a market that is comparable to that of heroin.
In the third chapter, we first consider the main characteristics of the illegal suppliers of doping products in Italy, develop a typology of them based on their profession or occupation, and single out their motives. As we draw our information almost exclusively from law enforcement sources, we speak of illegal suppliers—that is, people who import, distribute, or administer doping products and have been at least suspected of a doping-related offense under Italian law. As will become clear in the course of this and especially the following chapters, however, there is a very thin and ambiguous line between illegal and legal suppliers, so much so that we will drop the adjective “illegal” in the following chapter, when we consider distribution chains and market relationships. On the basis of Italy’s anti-doping investigations, we conclude that illegal suppliers of doping products are predominantly male Italians and have a legitimate profession or occupation. Many of them, in particular, belong to the world of gyms, health care or human, and horse sports. For most of them, the primary motive for engaging in the supply of doping products is private (or, more rarely, institutional) profit. Staff members of sports teams and sports federations are however often motivated by the same overconformity to a sports ethic that also drives elite athletes to dope (Sport in society: Issues and controversies, Boston, 205–214).
Although the chapter only analyzes empirical data on Italy, the findings here presented can be considered illustrative of the suppliers of doping products in other countries, even if similarities and differences must be ascertained empirically in future projects.
In the fourth chapter, we first analyze the distribution chains composed by legal and illegal suppliers of doping products in Italy, noting that the length of the chain and the legal status of the transactions vary depending on the products exchanged. Given the embeddedness of many supply-side activities in legitimate professions and exchanges, we then argue that the relationships the suppliers develop with each and their customers can often be subsumed under the broad category of white-collar crime. Tout court illegal enterprises also emerge, though, particularly among the suppliers dealing with substances that are illegally manufactured for doping purposes. Although the chapters only analyze empirical data on Italy, the findings here presented can be considered illustrative of the market for doping products in other countries, which have yet not been studied empirically. Future projects are called to ascertain empirically similarities and differences between the Italian market and what remains unexplored elsewhere.
To fully understand the market relationships among the suppliers of doping products, we focus in the fifth chapter on two very different sets of actors. The first ones are officials of national sports bodies, including in this expression both the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) and sports federations. As seen in the third chapter, during the 1980s and 1990s, officials of sports federations occasionally distributed doping products directly to elite athletes of some disciplines, most notably track and field and weightlifting. Most often, though, CONI and sports federations officials have “merely” provided protection to doping elite athletes and the latter’s suppliers of doping products or have not exercised their supervisory and control functions with due diligence. In doing so, Italian sports body officials often did not behave any differently than their foreign or international counterparts, as several examples suggest. On more than one occasion, moreover, Italian sports body officials enjoyed the support of successive Italian governments.
In the sixth chapter of the book, we analyze the data available to estimate the financial dimensions of the Italian market for doping products, including the revenues and profits of different types of suppliers of doping products. As expected, this objective has been the most challenging of the whole project. As is well known in the literature on illegal markets, it is always very difficult to estimate the size of a market that is at least partially illegal (e.g., Reuter and Greenfield, World Economics 2(4):159–173, 2001). We hence have no ambition to provide a definitive estimate; rather, we make a first attempt to assess the retail revenues and hence financial dimensions of the market.
We proceed in three steps, the first two referring to the market in its entirety and the last focusing on the revenues and profits of different suppliers. First, we estimate the potential market value of the substances seized by NAS and other law enforcement agencies in Italy. Second, we assess the total retail expenditures—or the total financial size of the market—for doping substances, using the consumption estimates developed in Chap. 2. Third, we analyze the rather sketchy data collected concerning the revenues and profits of a few illegal suppliers of doping products in Italy. A preliminary condition for the first two steps is the determination of the prices of doping substances—and this is what we begin with.
Our main findings are that, with few exceptions, doping products are relatively cheap, certainly cheaper than illegal drugs, if they are bought at regular pharmacy prices or on the Internet. Therefore, the revenues generated by retail exchanges are also relatively modest, representing only a fraction of the revenues raised on the market for cocaine. We acknowledge, however, that our underlying consumption estimates severely underestimate the consumption of some of the most expensive substances and hence the related revenues.
The previous chapters have documented the numerous and high-level criminal investigations carried out in Italy on the production and trafficking of doping products. As mentioned in the introduction, these investigations have been made possible by three elements. The first consists of the Anti-Doping Act 376 of 2000 and specifically the wide-ranging offense of doping that the act established. The latter two elements are of institutional, rather than legal, nature: the existence of NAS, a law enforcement agency specialized in public health issues, and the autonomy of public prosecutors. In the seventh chapter of the book, we review the criminal law provisions of Italy’s anti-doping legislation and describe the key institutions active in Italy in the fight against doping. In doing so, we also note the overall poor performance of the Italian judicial system, which partially results from the very autonomy of prosecutors and courts but is also the consequence of a plurality of other factors. We then present some statistical data about the outcomes of Italy’s anti-doping criminal law actions (e.g., reports, arrests, convictions) and finally identify five main sets of challenges such actions face in addition to the fundamental one represented by the inefficiency of the overall judicial system. While four challenges are domestic, the fifth one results from the ineffective international police and justice cooperation.
In the eighth and final chapter of this book, we synthesize the main findings of our seminal study on the market for doping products in Italy and draw policy lessons for the future development of international anti-doping policy. The general aim of the study has been to analyze the production and distribution of doping products and to understand how anti-doping criminal provisions and their enforcement can contribute to the control of doping within and outside the sports worlds. In other words, given WADA and other policy-makers’ growing dissatisfaction with the traditional anti-doping athlete-focused approach, we have considered the extent to which law enforcement action and intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies and national anti-doping organizations can become—in the words of WADA President John Fahey—as “the future of anti-doping” (UK Antidoping, 2011).
... Given the size of the problem, my coauthor and I (e.g., Paoli and Donati, 2014;Paoli and Greenfield, 2017) conceptualized the use and supply of doping products (regardless of the users' type) as a market, applying the theories and tools developed by criminology to study illegal markets in a case study of the Italian market. Subsequent studies have confirmed the validity of the market perspective (e.g., Antonopolous and Hall, 2016;Fincoeur, 2016). ...
... The first project is a an empirical study of the supply and demand of doping products in Italy that I conducted a few years ago with Alessandro Donati on behalf of the WADA (Paoli and Donati, 2014). Much of the data of that study was collected in close collaboration with the Carabinieri Command for Health Protection. ...
... Our analyses in Italy, France and Belgium indicate that the suppliers of doping products rarely have criminal records (Paoli and Donati, 2014;Fincoeur and Paoli, 2014;Fincoeur, 2016). In Italy, in particular, most suppliers known to NAS were male, Italian citizens and with few exceptions had a legitimate profession or occupation (see table 1). ...
... This essay builds a model to preliminary scope the market for doping substances in Italy, revisiting earlier estimates developed in The Sports Doping Market (Paoli and Donati, 2014). ...
... In this chapter, we rely on the same sources of data that we analyzed for the completion of our 2014 book ( Paoli and Donati, 2014), much of which was collected in close collaboration with the Carabinieri Command for Health Protection. This unit is still known -and will be referred to here -by the acronym NAS from its original name, Nuclei Anti-Sofisticazione. ...
... nevertheless engage in regular or occasional physical exercise and may have some connection or susceptibility to doping for other lifestyle purposes. However, due to lack of lack of data we have not been able to estimate doping prevalence in the latter group-about 7.8 million people in Italy-nor among physically inactive people (see Paoli and Donati, 2014: xxiv-xxvi and 28-35 for details on definitions and statistics). ...
... In addition to being prohibited by the WADA Code, the trade and distribution of doping products are nowadays subject to state restrictions and prohibitions in most European countries, the United States, and elsewhere (Houlihan and Garcia, 2012). Some of these countries go even as far to prohibit the use of such products at least in elite sports (e.g., Paoli and Donati, 2014). ...
... The first project is a an empirical study of supply and demand of doping products in Italy that I conducted a few years ago with Alessandro Donati on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Paoli and Donati, 2014). Much of the data of that study was collected in close collaboration with the Carabinieri Command for Health Protection. ...
... More generally, the analyses in Italy, France and Belgium indicate that the suppliers of doping products rarely appear to have criminal records (Paoli and Donati, 2014;Fincoeur and Paoli, 2014;Fincoeur, 2016). Even in Italy the evidence does not suggest a major role for organized crime, as most typically construed, in the supply of doping products. ...
... Notwithstanding the pronouncements of criminality and enforcement activity, relatively little is known about the supply of doping products. 3 Only a small number of studies has focused on suppliers or framed doping in market-based terms (for example, Koert and van Kleij, 1998;Donati, 2007;Kraska et al., 2010;Fincoeur and Paoli, 2014;Paoli and Donati, 2014;Lowther, 2015) and criminology, as a discipline, has only recently "discovered" the topic of doping ( Paoli, 2012). Against this backdrop, we analyze the supply of doping products by revisiting and building on the central findings of an empirical study of supply and demand in Italy (Paoli 1 For a formal definition of doping, see WADA, 2015. 2 Hoberman (2012: 2-3) reports several quotations. ...
... 3 By contrast, the use of doping products has been well-researched and reveals a substantial demand in the Western world. Several studies have attempted to estimate the prevalence of the use of doping substances among specific types of users, such as elite athletes ( Striegel et al., 2010), and at the national level ( Paoli and Donati, 2014). McCabe et al. (2007), Kokkevi et al. (2008, and others have conducted epidemiological studies and Pope, Phillips andOlivardia (2000), Hoberman (2005), Waddington and Smit (2009), and others have considered reasons for use. ...
... McCabe et al. (2007), Kokkevi et al. (2008, and others have conducted epidemiological studies and Pope, Phillips andOlivardia (2000), Hoberman (2005), Waddington and Smit (2009), and others have considered reasons for use. and Donati, 2014) and argue, first, that supply and demand come together to form a "market"; second, that this market should be conceptualized as "quasi-illegal"; and third, that this conceptualization can help inform policymaking, not just in Italy, but more broadly, and might have a bearing on research in criminology and sociology. We endorse the term "market" because doping substances, if not methods, are regularly produced and exchanged-that is, distributed through complex chains and sold to end users-under competitive conditions. ...
This chapter is concerned with the nature of the supply of doping products and the relevance of market-based concepts, with specific reference to conditions in Italy. Notwithstanding concerns about doping and the role of the criminal underworld in sport, relatively little is known about the supply of doping products. Against this backdrop, we analyze the supply of doping products by revisiting and building on the central findings of an empirical study of supply and demand in Italy and argue, first, that supply and demand come together to form a "market"; second, that this market is "quasi-illegal"; and third, that this conceptualization can help inform policymaking in Italy and elsewhere and might have a bearing on future research in criminology and other disciplines. 1
... Contrary to the others, those products might be original licensed products manufactured by official pharmaceutical companies but instead of being delivered to legal purchasers, are being sold on the black market. According to Paoli and Donati (2014), health care or pharmaceutical company employees contribute to the doping products black market through thefts ( Paoli & Donati, 2014). Visual distinction between packaging from counterfeit products and original products from legitimate pharmaceutical companies is often difficult ( Coopman & Cordonnier, 2012). ...
... Contrary to the others, those products might be original licensed products manufactured by official pharmaceutical companies but instead of being delivered to legal purchasers, are being sold on the black market. According to Paoli and Donati (2014), health care or pharmaceutical company employees contribute to the doping products black market through thefts ( Paoli & Donati, 2014). Visual distinction between packaging from counterfeit products and original products from legitimate pharmaceutical companies is often difficult ( Coopman & Cordonnier, 2012). ...
... As mentioned, doping products found their way from being consumed merely within registered sports to a much wider user group-the general population. They are primarily used for beauty and antiageing purposes, such as increasing muscle size or losing weight, or in certain settings to boost aggressiveness ( Graham et al., 2009;Kanayama, Hudson, & Pope, 2010;Paoli & Donati, 2014). Doping substances are known to produce different, potentially harmful, adverse drug effects, such as cardiomyopathies, liver diseases, mood changes, immune responses, etc. ( Kanayama et al., 2010;Kanayama & Pope, 2012;Kicman, 2008;Pope et al., 2014). ...
Background:
Substances developed for therapeutic use are also known to be misused by athletes as doping agents and, outside of regulated sport, for image-enhancement. This has generated a market for counterfeit doping substances. Counterfeit doping agents may be of poor pharmaceutical quality and therefore constitute health risks to consumers.
Objectives:
This study aims to investigate the pharmaceutical quality of 1,190 doping products seized at the Swiss border.
Methods:
Swiss customs authorities seize incoming shipments potentially containing doping agents. Qualitative and semiquantitative analyses were performed in order to test for prohibited doping substances. The main analytical methods utilized for characterizing confiscated compounds were liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis with subsequent in-gel tryptic digestion and identification of peptidic compounds using nanoliquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and electrochemiluminescence immuno assay.
Results:
For 889 (75%) of the analyzed products, the label suggested the content of anabolic agents, for 146 samples (12%) peptide hormones or growth factors, and for 113 items (9%) antiestrogens, aromatase inhibitors or other metabolic modulators. For the majority of the investigated products, the pharmaceutical quality was an unsatisfactory standard: nonapproved substances were detected and less than 20% of the products contained the claimed substance in the respective amount.
Conclusion:
A comprehensive sample of confiscated doping products was analyzed, allowing for monitoring of developments regarding the use of doping substances in Switzerland and for anticipating future trends and challenges in sports drug testing. An alarming number of tested products was of substandard pharmaceutical quality.
... However, relatively recent technological developments that allow any individual to bet on sport competitions around the world and to follow the performance of international teams and players seem to have precipitated and facilitated the commission of fraud in sport (Dietl & Weingärtner, 2012). The increased criminalization of sport (see e.g., Masters, 2015) has been explained by developments such as sport's professionalization, medicalization, politization, and commercialization (Paoli & Donati, 2014). The ever-evolving nature of technology and globalization therefore impacts the nature of fraud and the ways in which fraud is carried out in the sport sphere. ...
... According to the Council of Europe's recent typology framework (Group of Copenhagen, 2020), doping is also a type of sport manipulation. However, as research on the phenomenon of doping in sport is already in a more advanced stage (i.e., Paoli & Donati, 2014 wrote a comprehensive book on the topic), we will not address it here. When it comes to the different sports that fraud can occur in, e-sports were also kept out of the analysis. ...
This study provides a structured overview of the literature published between 2010 and 2020 on the causes and consequences of fraud in sport using a systematic search strategy. Our results show that the current literature on this phenomenon is mostly focused on football as a specific type of sport, and on competition manipulation as a specific type of fraud. Guided by the routine activity theory, we observed that motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the lack of capable guardians render sport vulnerable for fraud in general, and for competition manipulation, corruption, financial fraud, and human trafficking in particular. The consequences of fraud in sport are mostly financial, through a diminution in the public's trust combined with a decrease in attendance and spectatorship to sport events. The phenomenon of fraud in sport remains strongly under-researched through empirical designs, and an interdisciplinary approach is required to tackle its complex nature and scope.
... There has been some work into how risk and trust are navigated in relation to the online supply of illicit drugs, ranging from how trust relationships between buyers and sellers are cemented (van de Ven & Koenraadt 2017;Koenraadt 2019), to the significance of specifics in how supply operates, including how particular shipping and payment methods are employed to avoid detection, and ensure some degree of safety for buyers and sellers (Aldridge & Askew 2017; Aldridge & Décary-Hétu 2016a). Whilst such research has been conducted into aspects of the online market for IPEDs (Paoli & Donati 2014;Hall, Koenraadt & Antonopoulos 2017), precise methods vary to some degree by the structure of the specific market in question. In contrast to online pharmacies and sites specifically dedicated to hosting illicit marketplaces, for example, which must navigate certain regulatory frameworks to avoid detection , the forum-based market for steroids, operating as a peer-to-peer exchange where transactions occurred 'off-site' via email, did not face these same issues, and those who accessed or sold IPEDs in this marketplace thus had differing perceptions of risk and security in relation to the mechanisms by which supply operated. ...
... Before discussing the actual processes of steroid 'brewing', however, it is worth first addressing the motivations identified by forum users as underlying this phenomenon, since homebrewing is becoming an increasingly important focus for research (Kraska et al. 2010;Paoli & Donati 2014;Brennan et al. 2018;Turnock 2020), and greater understanding of motivations in this area will help to inform and frame coming analyses of wider brewing practices, and their significance to forming appropriate IPED policy. ...
The use of image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs) is a growing focus for researchers, policy makers, public health workers and others, as consumption of these drugs appears to be on the increase, fuelled by both cultural shifts, and economic and technological changes in the 21st century. In order to fully understand the contexts of this increasingly significant form of drug use, and offer an informed approach to policy, it is necessary to understand the market in these drugs, and the ways in which access and supply operate at all market levels.
Whilst existing research both in local gym contexts and investigating supply through ‘online pharmacies’ has been revealing, many seeking to use steroids rely on online bodybuilding and ‘fitness’ forums for information, and ‘peer-to-peer’ supply of these drugs, and the market operations of these popular subcultural spaces have to date been under-researched. This work consequently offers an in-depth exploration of the market for IPEDs found on one of the most popular of these forums, drawing on data from over 28,800 unique forum posts, examining:
• the motivations of buyers and sellers in using this marketplace;
• the economic mechanisms by which the market operates, and its key features;
• how steroids are accessed at the higher levels of the ‘supply chain’, and how their ‘journey’ to being sold on forums of this type;
• the differences between forum-based supply compared to other markets in these drugs, and how this impacts risk and policy.
This work grounds findings in the cultural contexts of online ‘fitness’ cultures, and broader prevailing online political philosophies, to offer real understanding of the ‘inside’ details of how such markets operate.
This book makes significant contributions to the understanding of IPED consumption and risk by offering a substantial exploration of how the market for steroids operates on popular fitness forums, and in doing so informs the existing literature on both local market contexts, and broader forms of online supply such as ‘online pharmacies’. Further, the ethnographic approach of the work allows for significant contributions to be made to overall understanding of the cultural contexts to the online supply of IPEDs, and how supply operates within digital bodybuilding and fitness cultures.
... Notably, despite harsher legal implications of home brewing in many countries (Antonopoulos and Hall 2016), due to the general lack of legal enforcement and the ease with which steroids can be produced, evidence suggests that both users and suppliers are turning to this means of supply (van de Ven 2017). Thus, it is important to note that not only does the legal status of AAS suffer the burden of ambiguity and contextual specificity (Paoli and Donati 2014) but, even where illegal, enforcement and penalties also vary dramatically from country to country. ...
... In terms of illegal suppliers, the extant literature suggests that the market can be divided into a number of dealer 'types'. Paoli and Donati (2014) research in Italy and van de Ven's (2016) research in the Netherlands and Belgium point to people active in the gym environment, providers of supplements, the security industry, healthcare professionals who illegally supply performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs), members from the organized sport world, people working in the animal/livestock sector, people with no distinctive profession or occupation, and/or people who produce their own steroids (known as 'home-brewing' and 'underground steroid labs'). The gym and healthcare industry appear to make up the largest source through which PIEDs more broadly are illegally obtained (Underwood 2017;van de Ven, Dunn, and Mulrooney 2020). ...
In the bodybuilding and fitness communities, anecdotal evidence suggests that some take ‘steroid holidays’, traveling to and living in foreign countries so as to have greater access to performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs). This study aimed to explore this phenomenon. Discussions in bodybuilding, fitness, and PIED forums formed the basis of this study. Several websites were identified and keyword searches were used to identify potential ‘threads’, which were downloaded and thematically analyzed. Twenty-two threads consisting of 254 posts from 188 individual forum members were included. Two themes were identified: (1) Product purchasing and (2) Logistics. In the first theme, the purchase of the products for individual use was a key feature, with their motivations centered on perceptions of legality, purity, and risk. In the second theme, discussions focused those members who sought to use the PIEDs they sourced in a foreign country within that country versus using foreign-sourced PIEDs in Australia. The perception that steroids may be cheaper, more readily accessible, or of better quality in countries in close proximity to Australia may lead some to travel to low- or middle-income countries to use or access PIEDs which could lead to legal and health risks.
... Relating this to the broader emerging 'homemade drug' phenomenon (Van Hout, 2014), Brennan et al. (2018) point to the likelihood of an expansion in 'homebrewing', and note the potential for harm that could be associated with this, and consequent need for greater understanding. While Brennan et al. (2018) detail online forum data relating to 'homebrewing', they note that indepth research exploring this process remains limited, with Kraska et al. (2010) and Paoli and Donati (2014) being the only notable literature on this subject to date. Kraska et al. (2010) explored the experiences of a national-level American bodybuilder who acquired steroids from the internet for 'homebrewing' and supply in the local market, providing an overview of this operation, and its impacts on local IPED use and supply. ...
... The paper illustrates the key aspects to online acquisition of 'bulk' product for 'brewing' and local market supply within the US context, where such an approach to steroid 'manufacture' and supply appears to be common, based on IPED cases heard in US courts (Denham, 2019). Given this prevalence, the understanding of how such processes occur offered by Kraska et al. (2010) is clearly significant, and it is evident more research of this type is needed in other local market contexts where 'UGL' is prevalent, as in Paoli and Donati's (2014) Italian IPED market research. ...
In looking to contextualize the implications of the increasing use of IPEDs, researchers have explored some of the operations of the market in these drugs, both at the local level, and online. Whilst these explorations have offered some much needed insight into this market, there remain aspects of the supply process that are still not fully understood. This paper offers an ethnographic narrative case study of a single steroid ‘brewing’ and supply operation in South-West England, in order to help contribute to understanding of this supply process, and the broader market for IPEDs. This research explores in turn how ‘drift’ into IPED supply occurs in the local market, how steroid powders are accessed online and imported for the purposes of local supply, the process by which these powders are ‘manufactured’ into injectable steroids locally, and finally the business and customer-oriented practices of the local market suppliers who distribute this finished product, and local market contexts.
This paper builds on and supports the existing literature in this area, and contributes to knowledge by helping demystify some of the market operations relating to this level of IPED supply, which will help to inform future policy regarding harms of IPEDs, and regulation.
... While many countries do not regard doping in sport as a criminal offence, the issue is becoming widely recognised as significant in both professional and amateur sport. In 2000, Italy introduced legislation making doping a criminal offence (Paoli and Donati 2014). In 2016, Russia-undoubtedly in response to the doping scandals surrounding that nation's participation in the 2016 Olympic Games ("Decision of the IOC" 2016)-also introduced laws criminalising doping in sport. ...
... The USADA and the CIRC investigations also highlighted the involvement in the doping programme of many different individuals within the athletes' support networks, such as team managers, doctors, coaches and family members (USADA 2012). Previous research suggested that these individuals can influence an athlete's decision-making process in relation to participating in doping (Bell et al. 2016;Engelberg et al. 2015Engelberg et al. , 2017Moston et al. 2014;Nixon1992;Paoli and Donati 2014). The role of these support networks in doping becomes especially important when we consider that current anti-doping strategies employed by the relevant organisations focus primarily on the athletes and their activities, with much less attention paid to the activities of the support network (WADA 2015). ...
The objective of this study was to examine the role of athletes’ support networks in doping in sport from a crime prevention perspective. To achieve this objective, the researchers conducted an in-depth script analysis of documents related to investigations in 2012 by the United States Anti-Doping Agency and in 2015 by the Cycling Independent Reform Commission of the doping programme carried out by the US Postal Service cycling team between 1996 and 2012. The results suggest that athletes’ support networks—such as team doctors, sports scientists, team directors and family members—play a critical role as social facilitators in doping in sport by encouraging, supporting and protecting both the doping programmes and the athletes who participate in them. This paper argues that a greater proportion of prevention measures must focus beyond the athlete themselves and on the activities of individuals within an athlete’s support network. The paper proposes several situational prevention strategies specifically targeting the activities of social facilitators.
... The substances marketed and sold on the surface web are mainly non-controlled substances or substances, including lifestyle drugs, for which legal controls differ between countries and jurisdictions (EMCDDA, 2016). Due to the blurring boundaries between the legitimate and illegitimate sale of these substances, it is particularly difficult to regulate the online lifestyle drugs market (Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016;Paoli & Donati, 2014;Van de Ven, 2015). For example, lifestyle drugs in the Netherlands are controlled as different classes and schedules of drugs, under different forms of legislation (Economic Offences Act (2001); Medicine Act (1963); Opium Law (1976)), with different responsible bodies (e.g. ...
... The illicit market, either online or offline, is the only option for these customers to obtain lifestyle drugs. This group may include bodybuilders who use steroids to increase muscle mass (Monaghan, 2001;Paoli & Donati, 2014;van de Ven, 2015), students who use cognitive enhancers such as Ritalin for better study results (Mazanov, Dunn, Connor, & Fielding, 2013) or consumers who take sexual enhancers (e.g. Viagra) during nightlife (Intomart, 2009(Intomart, , 2012Koenraadt, 2015;Koenraadt & de Haan, 2016). ...
Aims: The Internet has marked a revolution in the supply of illegal drugs, while at the same time, new types of illegal and semilegal drugs increasingly are becoming available. In order to deepen our understanding of the demand and supply of these new drugs on the Internet, this study focuses on the demographic characteristics, methods and preferences of people who purchase ‘lifestyle drugs’ through the surface web.
Methods: Data were obtained through the following two surveys: a prevalence study of 50,848 Dutch respondents and an in-depth study of 153 people who have purchased lifestyle drugs online.
Findings: At least 10.2% of the Dutch adult population has bought medicines online; the majority being lifestyle drugs (5.2%). In addition, an estimated 1.6% of the Dutch population has purchased medicines illicitly, with the majority of products concerning lifestyle drugs (0.9%). Illicit lifestyle drugs are primarily purchased through e-commerce sites and online pharmacies, and users report high satisfaction rates.
Conclusion: Purchasing lifestyle drugs is characterised by specific online dynamics, as the drugs are often openly accessible and the boundaries between legal and illegal sale blurred. As new types of drugs become available, it is important to further monitor customers’ preferences and experiences.
... Chatwin et al. (2017) discuss the similarities between HEDs and NPS, noting that many drugs in both categories are 'designer' versions of controlled drugs, with the supply of novel HEDs paralleling that seen previously for NPS. The market for HEDs has been described as 'semi-legal' (Paoli & Donati, 2014;Coomber et al., 2014), where products legally bought in certain jurisdictions are supplied illicitly in others , and new products are introduced which are analogous to controlled drugs, but evade existing legal restrictions (Denham, 2011). This exemplifies Passas' (1999) notion of legal and political criminogenic asymmetries, in that global inconsistencies are taken advantage of to generate profit for illicit suppliers. ...
In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the potential public health risks attached to human enhancement drugs (HEDs). While much work has explored the use and supply of HEDs, the market for these compounds is constantly evolving, with new substances being created and sold, and access becoming increasingly simplified through digital platforms. However, one area that has yet to receive scholarly attention is the availability of 'grey market' novel synthetic peptide hormones (SPH) through sellers on the mainstream e-commerce platforms Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba. This commentary piece therefore sets out to uncover this burgeoning corner of the broader HEDs trade in the UK market. Findings indicate that SPH are readily accessible over these e-commerce sites, with sellers evading restrictions by claiming that the substances are 'not for human consumption' or 'for research only', while simultaneously advertising their products as wellbeing supplements. Labelling practices are further identified as a point of concern, since packaging is not necessarily reflective of product quality or true location of origin. Finally, discussion centres on the enhanced legitimacy offered by selling through mainstream sites like Amazon, the capacity for counterfeiting and misrepresentation, and the public health implications of this substantial grey market.
... Standard postal services were seemingly used by both types of direct suppliers and also third-party websites to deliver AAS. Paoli and Donati (2014) identify the postal delivery of AAS within Italy, with wider literature suggesting that drug suppliers opt for postal delivery as it offers both buyers and sellers protection and anonymity, mitigating some of the perceived risks that face-to-face deals can bring (Aldridge et al., 2018;. Moreover, we document that some individual direct suppliers upload photographs of AAS packages being sent to customers (Figure 9). ...
Background
There have been notable shifts in the acquisition of anabolic androgenic steroids over time, with face-to-face (within gyms) and online supply (e.g. internet forums, crypto-markets/darknet, and pharmacies) being popular locations to source and acquire these drugs. Fresh evidence suggests that social media facilitates the supply of anabolic androgenic steroids, however, no study has exclusively examined this phenomenon.
Aim and method
This investigation sheds light on the supply of anabolic androgenic steroids over two major social media platforms: (i) Instagram; and (ii) TikTok. Digital ethnographic observations were conducted to identify and observe marketing strategies and supply methods.
Findings
The findings reveal: (1) public sale and advertisement of anabolic androgenic steroids via two distinct supplier types (i) direct suppliers (individuals and laboratories/shop accounts); and (ii) influencers (referring custom to third-party websites); (2) marketing techniques, including images of products, flash-sales, and discount codes; (3) delivery methods; (4) messaging platforms; and (5) payment.
Conclusions
Social media platforms facilitate the supply of anabolic androgenic steroids, increasing accessibility to these drugs. This, we argue, disproportionately affects younger, more vulnerable, and less informed populations. These findings ought to be considered within wider discussions related to harm reduction, providing policy makers with evidence to strengthen such calls.
... 4. For evidence of the cost of and market for doping, see e.g. Paoli and Donati (2013). 5. ...
The aim of this article is to present and critically discuss a gametheory-based argument in favour of the view that sports organizationsought to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs in
sport. After presenting the argument in detail, I try to show that
the argument is not convincing. First, the argument cannot be used
to argue in favour of WADA’s (World Anti-Doping Agency) current
ban on doping, at least if it rests on the assumption, that doping use
is always harmful. However, that in itself may not be a problem for
adherents of the argument, and they can and should modify the
harm assumption to cover only harmful use of doping. Second,
even with this modification, it is argued that the harm assumption
is flawed, for example, because it is not obvious why we should
accept certain harms in sport but not harm to athletes caused by
doping. Third, the argument is also flawed because it entails the
non-competitive assumption: if all athletes dope, then no competitive
advantages are gained by any athletes assumptions. The noncompetitive assumption is challenged in view of the observations
that doping can have some non-competitive advantages and is, so
to speak, not only a positional good and because doping, due to
unequal responsiveness, can give some highly responsive athletes
a competitive advantage over less responsive athletes.
... Sytuację pogarsza fakt, iż dotyczy to … nie tylko sportowców, lecz także szerokich rzesz ludzi ćwiczących dla celów estetycznych, a także policjantów, żołnierzy, czy przedstawicieli świata przestępczego. W produkcję i handel tymi substancjami zaangażowane są potężne grupy przestępczości zorganizowanej, a nie brak przykładów zaangażowania podmiotów politycznych (Paoli, Donati 2014). Dla przykładu, jak podaje Donati we wstrząsającym raporcie o światowym rynku obrotu środkami dopingującymi (2007 World Traffic In Doping Substances) w nielegalną produkcję i obrót sterydów anabolicznych zaangażowany był dyktator Panamy Manuel Noriega, który via Meksyk przemycał je następnie do USA i do Europy. ...
The book is a synthetic overview of the development of the phenomenon of doping in sport and initiatives aimed at counteracting this phenomenon
... In exploring powerlifters' relationship with polydrugs and risk, it is important to understand the contexts of supply of these drugs within this culture. IPED supply is often described as distinct from 'traditional' illicit drug markets Denham, 2011), and while the possible entrance of organised criminal gangs into aspects of this market has been noted (Fincoeur et al., 2015;Paoli & Donati, 2014), this literature nonetheless highlights norms for IPED supply at odds with stereotypical conceptions of commercial illicit drug markets, indicating this market remains somewhat distinct from the traditional criminal enterprise model . Salinas et al. (2019), however, suggest the intersection of IPED and illicit drug supply in their ethnography points to a convergence of markets, which challenges this prevailing discourse of IPED markets as distinct, particularly as IPEDs increasingly come to be seen as a profitable commodity by commercially-driven actors through their rising use (Densley et al., 2018), who might enter this market and 'push out' more culturally-embedded suppliers. ...
With the rising use of Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs (IPEDs), research has increasingly pointed to a need for in-depth understanding of users' consumption behaviours, in order to form effective harm reduction policy. With polydrug use prevalent in IPED-using cultures, both among ‘hardcore’ and non-competitive trainers, it is clear there is a need to understand this use, and its socio-cultural contexts, as well as how drug access and supply occurs within these cultures.
This paper offers an exploration of the motivations and contexts of hardcore powerlifters' polydrug use, as well as their experiences of IPED and other illicit drug market intersections, through findings drawn from 18 qualitative interviews with participants involved in these lifting cultures and gyms in South-West England, supported by ethnographic fieldwork conducted in nine gyms in the region over a four year period, including five ‘hardcore’ powerlifting and bodybuilding gyms, as well as four commercial gym establishments.
Results first demonstrate how cultural narratives around what is drug ‘use’ versus ‘abuse’ influenced powerlifters' consumption and perceptions of polydrugs, with a number of illicit drugs and other medicines used by these sportsmen, despite cultural opposition to other drug consumption considered to be harmful, and associated by powerlifters with ‘gym rats’, or YOLO type trainers. This leads into exploration of where powerlifters' polydrug consumption behaviours present the greatest risk, particularly in relation to the acceptance of benzodiazepine use as a form of ‘steroid accessory drug’ for long periods, as well as the common sharing and use of opioid painkillers to allow continued training through injury, and discussion of where harm reduction policy might therefore be most appropriately targeted for this population.
Findings then turn to an exploration of how polydrug supply occurs within powerlifting culture and gyms, and the intersections between IPED markets and other illicit drug markets perceived to exist in the region. This documents the prevalence of social supply norms of polydrugs following patterns observed for IPEDs in the existing literature, before discussing the extent to which individuals with links to criminal organisations may be ‘pushing out’ culturally-embedded IPED suppliers in the region, and the impacts this is having on risk for IPED buyers. This is followed by further discussion of relevance to policy, and avenues for future research into polydrug use and supply from a harm reduction perspective, as well as the limitations of this study as specific to a remote region of the UK.
... Findings from the study indicate that coaches are aware of what doping is and the sources of supply of drugs used in doping. This is somewhat consistent with the findings of [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] who found that the sources of doping substances are from doctors, coaches and gymnasiums. Some P.E. ...
The role of coaches in promoting anti-doping education among athletes is well researched in the western world. The present study examined the role of Physical Education (P.E.) teachers in anti-doping education in Ghana under doping practices, knowledge of anti-doping control and the importance of doping education in training programmes among student-athletes. Semi-structured interviews involving eleven P.E. teachers aged 31-46 who coached all the sporting disciplines in Senior High Schools-football, handball, netball, hockey, volleyball, table tennis, badminton and athletics were conducted. Based on the preliminary results, additional information was requested from 10 student-athletes on the use of doping products and the harmful effects. The interviews were transcribed, and the data were analysed thematically. The findings revealed that although coaches and athletes are aware of the effects of doping, the effort to promote anti-doping education have been met with resistance as students claimed P.E. teachers are not health professionals. To be recognised as the best, P.E. teachers were also found culpable of aiding students to use banned performance-enhancing drugs during competitions. A worrying picture of the present study is the sale of drugs to people especially the youths without prescriptions. This has not led only to loss of lives, but to an increase in doping cases, as students can easily have access to drugs that can be used in doping. The present study proposes recommendations and suggestions to the political stakeholder, based on its findings.
... Relatively few studies have investigated match-fixing from a player performance perspective (Hill, 2010). In general, these studies are based on the role players have in match fixing (Boniface, et al., 2012;Haberfeld & Sheehan, 2013;Nowy & Breuer, 2017), or on the use of performance enhancing substances by players to fix a match (Gorse & Chadwick, 2011;Paoli & Donati, 2013;Maennig, 2002). Furthermore, different types of match-fixing cases have been researched (Masters, 2015;Maennig, 2005;Bricknell, 2015) and studied the involvement of gambling and betting in match fixing, but none investigated player performance related to match-fixing. ...
Match-fixing is the process where the result of a sporting contest or game situation is deliberately manipulated for the personal material gain of one or more parties involved in
that activity. Match-fixing is a serious problem in football affecting the integrity of the
game. While indicators such as betting patterns have been used to identify match-fixing
cases, there are still many that go undetected and even those that are exposed are difficult to prosecute due to a lack of hard evidence. Electronic performance and tracking systems can potentially assist in both identification and evidence- development actions by detecting unusual changes in a players’ movement behaviour on the pitch. The purpose of this research was to examine whether performance metrics derived from players' positional x and y coordinates can detect match-fixing behaviour in football. Six different performance metrics have been examined and were used to create player performance profiles. The player performance profiles have been compared with standardized mean differences and were analysed with Approximate entropy (ApEn) analysis and different recursive partitioning techniques. Results show that match-fixing behaviour influenced defensive fixing players’ performance metrics during a football game. Positional performance metrics were most associated with fixing behaviour and showed substantial differences compared to normal behaviour. Fixing players moved forward on the pitch and kept more distance towards the position-specific centroid. The altered movement pattern resulted in more spread of play in the lateral direction suggesting fixing players are stretching the defence to create space. Further studies should investigate the use of a wider range of fixing scenarios of numerous games to further develop the match-fixing detection framework. The findings of this thesis can be beneficial, not only for integrity purposes of the football related society, but also for a wider spectrum of team sports using electronic performance and tracking systems to measure player performance. These findings provide insights to player performance metrics underpinning match-fixing behaviour for defence players which can possibly assist in providing supporting evidence to prosecute match-fixing players. Further, it provides scientific knowledge to create a match-fixing detection approach which covers both betting and non-betting related match-fixing.
... Illicit PIEDs are generally produced in clandestine laboratories and purchased on the black market [2,[12][13][14][15], mainly on the internet. In fact, purchasing on online platforms guarantees anonymity and does not require medical prescription or supervision, attractive features for people looking for those products. ...
Context: The illegal market of counterfeit and falsified medicines and supplements containing unlabeled pharmaceuticals is expanding worldwide. They are usually referred to by the term “performance and image enhancing drugs” (PIEDs) and are mainly steroids, stimulants, hormones, and drugs for erectile dysfunction. PIEDs are easily accessible through the online or black markets. We analyzed over 400 such medicines confiscated in Italy in the period 2017–2019, to determine their composition.
Methods: Confiscated products were analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry, in order to ascertain their composition and to evaluate the correspondence between what was declared on the label and the actual content, or to identify unknown products.
Results: The most commonly found substance was anabolic steroids, found in 64% of products, with 11% containing hormone modulators, 6% stimulants, 6% sexual enhancers (mainly sildenafil) and other drugs, including thyroid hormones, melanin stimulators, and vitamins. These substances were often in mixtures. The products were often mislabeled, containing contaminants in addition to the drug declared, or consisted of a drug completely different from the one reported on the label. Fifteen percent of products had a qualitative composition completely different from that declared, while 10% of products showed cross-contamination with other drugs, mainly testosterone esters, probably due to the presence of residues of other drugs in the production line. In addition, 11% of products were not labeled, so their purported composition was unknown.
Discussion: PIEDs pose a threat to public health. The main risks are related to the intrinsic toxicity of the substances found, especially when taken without a therapeutic indication. Another issue is related to the mislabeling of the fake medicines, and the poor-quality standard of counterfeit product preparation, with additional risks of the presence of other toxic ingredients or microbial contamination.
Conclusions: The use of counterfeit products is a public health concern, as it constitutes a high risk for consumer health. It is mainly caused by the uncontrolled use of steroids, stimulants, sexual enhancers, and other medicaments, without medical indication or supervision, with variable and unknown compositions and doses, as well as other contaminants as a result of the absence of good manufacturing practices.
... Whereas the referees in our sample primarily contacted the football federation after witnessing or suspecting match-fixing and suggested such federation as their main contact point for the future, the Belgian match-fixing scandals highlight the crucial role played by state law enforcement agencies in dealing with this phenomenon. In the case of doping too, law enforcement agencies have often played a fundamental role in breaking the "walls of silence" in the sports world and countering violations of both sports and state laws (e.g., [46,47]). The triangulation of these findings thus suggests that, contrary to the referees' suggestions, it would be risky to leave the task of combatting match-fixing only to sports bodies. ...
Match-fixing is increasingly perceived by both national and European policy makers and independent observers as a major threat to the integrity of sports, and in particular football. A series of recent scandals in different European countries seems to corroborate the perception of football’s growing vulnerability to manipulations, suggesting that such vulnerability may be related to football’s popularity, the huge related financial interests and the rapid growth of online betting. Nonetheless, the empirical research on match-fixing in football has so far been very limited. Against this background, we present in this paper the results of survey amongst 595 referees belonging to the Royal Belgian Football Association about their attitudes towards the incidence, disclosure and combatting, and reporting of match-fixing, as well as their personal experiences with match-fixing. The main findings can be summarized as follows: (1) approximately 44% of the referees believes that at least one in ten Belgian football games is fixed; (2) 41% of the referees considers the likelihood of match-fixing in football being disclosed (very) low; (3) only 11% of the referees is aware of at least one protected reporting system for match-fixing; (4) 23.5% of the referees has already witnessed or suspected match-fixing in football; and (5) only 12% of the referees who witnessed or suspected match-fixing reported the only/last case of match-fixing they witnessed or suspected. Although our referee’s perceptions might not correspond to reality, our findings suggest the need to introduce adequate protected reporting systems, conduct awareness campaigns and intensify law enforcement agencies’ and sports bodies’ cooperation and data sharing.
... Research shows that social networks are factors that contribute to doping (Bell et al., 2016;Pappa & Kenney, 2013). An athlete's social network contains referent groups that place considerable pressure on athletes to dope (Bell et al., 2016;Engelberg et al., 2015;Kirby et al., 2011;Paoli & Donati, 2014). An athlete's social network can be comprised of athletes, coaches, doctors, and/or administrators, any of whom may rationalize and normalize doping, and/or may apply pressure to athletes to conform, perform and/or win, or maintain a code of silence. ...
Understanding why individuals engage in sport corruption is an emerging topic of research. Micro-level accounts of corruption have generally used a single disciplinary approach toward understanding why actors commit corruption (e.g., doping and match-fixing) in specific sports. The purpose of this study was to first examine individual-level explanations of corruption in the context of intercollegiate athletics; and, second, to generate an interdisciplinary framework. A multi-case analysis was conducted of 20 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) major infractions (corruption) reports that occurred between 2005 and 2015. The findings showed that actors’ explanations were based on psychological factors—motivations (social relationship and self-interest) and personal norms, professional factors (abuse of power and failure of responsibilities), and justification factors (rationalizing strategies). This research builds on existing scholarship by generating an interdisciplinary framework of micro-level accounts of sport corruption in intercollegiate athletics.
... The culture of drugs was shared by a very large number of riders and was often a part of the job. Various external changes in the values and the uses of sports, from amateurism to the Cold War (Dimeo, 2007 ;Gleaves & Hunt, 2016), have combined with an increasing supply of enhancing drugs (Paoli & Donati, 2014) to alter the external perception of performance doping in sports. Consequently, the behaviour of teams' staff and riders failed to adapt to a new context, one in which people appear to be more concerned with doping issues. ...
... However, he decided to ignore such suspicions. 121 The analysis of documents from the 1990s indicates a continuation of this policy, especially concerning the development of the IAAF into a professional federation-and eventually dropping the term 'amateur' from its name in 2001. 122 During this period, Nebiolo was content to leave the decisions with the IAAF Medical Committee. ...
The election of the Italian sports administrator Primo Nebiolo to the presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1981 was a key turning point in the history of international track and field. The choice of Nebiolo reflected the dominant politics in the Federation at this time and paved the way for a major change in sport political strategy in the IAAF. However, Nebiolo´s innovations and political maneuvers began even before his election as IAAF President, and they had an impact that went far beyond that of the IAAF. This paper draws on primary source material in several languages, from various national and international archives to critically analyze Nebiolo´s controversial contribution to international sport. By focusing on the impacts and consequences of his strategies, negotiations and reforms in global track and field, this study analyzes the power of an individual agent to transform an entire sport.
... Even today, it seems hardly thinkable that an elite rider could dope without any assistance from health professionals (Overbye et al., 2013). To some extent, extending the responsibility for doping therefore mirrors the development of the global anti-doping regime, which tends to increasingly tackle the supply-side of the market (Paoli & Donati, 2014). ...
There is some evidence that the widespread culture of tolerance towards doping within elite cycling has been splintered over the past two decades. Not unsurprisingly when looking back at cycling's recent history, elite teams are now expected to take an active part in doping prevention. In particular, we show in this article that weak team supervision and precarious work conditions may impact individual doping risks. Based on these two indicators, we then develop four ideal types of dopers. Finally, we elaborate on policy implications for doping prevention. This article is based on aggregated results from two research projects on doping in elite cycling. In total, 109 interviews were conducted with elite riders and staff members from eleven elite teams, as well as other stakeholders.
... Along with the Weiders' initiatives, numerous epigones developed the bodybuilding market, including drugs for which "gym owners or managers and bodybuilding instructors work most often as retailers" (Paoli and Donati, 2014, p. 66). They are particularly efficient because they are frequently user-dealers (Paoli and Donati, 2014), which helps them to be recognized as experts. Trading the same doping products that they consume also reinforces them as opinion leaders of the bodybuilding lifestyle. ...
How do gym-goers who are normally not inclined to resort to appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs (APEDs) progressively normalize their use? Based on data collected through a year and a half of participant observation in a gym and 30 semi-directive interviews with practitioners with varying profiles in French-speaking Switzerland, this article examines the evolution of practitioners’ relations with APED use by articulating various levels of analysis. Associated with social vulnerabilities, the progressive normalization of APED use is concomitant with the “conversion” to bodybuilding. Our results show the extent to which and under what conditions interactions within the layout of gyms can influence practices. From refusal to normalization, our results suggest that APEDs and the associated beliefs coincide with career stages, which we aim to bring to light here.
... Research shows that social networks are factors that contribute to doping (Bell et al., 2016;Pappa & Kenney, 2013). An athlete's social network contains referent groups that place considerable pressure on athletes to dope (Bell et al., 2016;Engelberg et al., 2015;Kirby et al., 2011;Paoli & Donati, 2014). An athlete's social network can be comprised of athletes, coaches, doctors, and/or administrators, any of whom may rationalize and normalize doping, and/or may apply pressure to athletes to conform, perform and/or win, or maintain a code of silence. ...
Corruption in the sport industry is a pervasive issue that threatens the integrity of sport as an institution. From doping and match-fixing to money laundering, corruption should be a concern to anybody interested in sport policy, management, governance, or ethics. This is the first book to explore the complexity of sport corruption in terms of its conceptualisation, causes, consequences, and reform. The first part looks at the concept of sport corruption, while the second examines the causes of sport corruption from individual, organisational, industry-wide, and longitudinal viewpoints. The third part discussed is the consequences of sport corruption and its impact on the global sport industry. Various approaches to regulatory reform are considered in the next part, as well as the challenges of combatting corruption in the sport industry. The final part assesses the current state of literature in this area and suggests opportunities for future research. Drawing on multidisciplinary case studies from across the world, this is a seminal contribution to the academic study of corruption in sport. It is important reading for all students and scholars of sport management, business, criminology, and law.
... BRissonneau, 2015). Het lage percentage van honest dopers zou dus uitgelegd kunnen worden door het feit dat de tolerantiecultuur binnen de wielersport ten aanzien van doping vandaag minder sterk lijkt.Van de Ven & mulRooney, 2014;paoli & donati, 2014) dient dus het misbruik van TTN verder bestudeerd te worden. ...
... Para el caso de los aspectos motivacionales que influyen en la práctica del fisiculturismo se relacionan normalmente con factores estéticos (mantener la forma física, bajar de peso, para competir, pasar el rato entre amigos o no, entre otros), tal y como se afirma enArbinaga, & García (2003), aunque existen otros factores tales como la salud (Trejo, Jasso, Mollinedo, & Lugo, 2012;Mollinedo, Trejo, Araujo, & Lugo, 2013Brand, Heck, & Ziegler, 2014;Brand, Wolff, & Thieme, 2014), implicando para el caso de estudio el logro de una mayor masa muscular y un mayor rendimiento deportivo (Yager, & O'Dea, 2014;Nacer, Mohammed, Idriss, Nouredine, Ali, & Fatiha, 2015;Andreasson, & Johansson, 2016). Si bien el doping es penalizado en numerosos deportes olímpicos (Paoli, & Donati, 2014;Platonov, 2016), en algunas modalidades deportivas no olímpicas es aceptado o al menos no perseguido (Bloodworth, Petróczi, Bailey, Pearce, & McNamee, 2012Arroyo, & Joshelyn, 2016). Por lo tanto, no se ha evidenciado en la consulta bibliográfica consultada un estudio relacionado con los motivos hacia el dopaje en fisiculturistas locales.aunque ...
La motivación hacia la práctica de una modalidad deportiva o recreativa se establece para satisfacer una necesidad lúdica o estética, entre otras cuestiones. En el caso que compete, la presente investigación tiene por objetivo caracterizar algunos indicadores motivacionales hacia el consumo de sustancias dopantes y no dopantes entre los practicantes de fisiculturismo del Gimnasio "El Templo" en Quito. Se estudió aleatoriamente a 150 voluntarios (16-50 años) que practican fisiculturismo, aplicándole una encuesta aleatoria para determinar algunos indicadores relacionados con el campo de acción estudiado (Grupos etarios, Nivel de escolaridad, Ocupación laboral, Motivación hacia la práctica de fisiculturismo, Importancia concebida a la apariencia, Sustancias utilizadas, disposición al consumo de sustancias dopantes y Efectos adversos identificados). Se demuestra que la mayor parte de los encuestados valora el aspecto físico (50%) como variable motivacional fundamental para la práctica de actividad física, indicando una mayor importancia concebida a la apariencia física (66%), siendo la práctica física mayor en la edad etaria comprendida entre los 21-30 años. Por otra parte, se establece que las sustancias dopantes más consumidas son la Hormona de crecimiento (36%) y diversas variantes de testosterona (15,33%), mientras que la mayor parte de las sustancias no dopantes consumidas se relacionan con el consumo de suplementos dietéticos (54,67%) y vitamínicos (48,67%), estableciéndose la disposición por el consumo de sustancias dopantes en un porciento elevado (60,67%). Por otra parte, los efectos adversos delimitados en la encuesta se relacionan con la calvicie (39%), las alteraciones renales y hepáticas (30,67%) y el acné (24,67%) entre otros.
... Consistent with previous research (Paoli & Donati, 2014), this study indicates that sources (and locations) of supply of doping substances named most often are doctors, other coaches and gymnasiums. Interestingly, however, most of the coaches believed athletes are unlikely to be tested (except in competition), and this belief may explain why many coaches stated that the best way for a doping athlete to avoid detection would be to use banned substances out of competition. ...
Coaches may have a significant role in an athlete’s decision to use, or not to use, performance enhancing substances. Research suggests that many coaches do not have the confidence or the knowledge to discuss anti-doping issues with their athletes. This study aimed to assess coaches’ awareness of doping practices, coaches’ knowledge of anti-doping control systems (random testing, out of competition testing, the biological passport and the athlete whereabouts system) and coaches’ involvement with anti-doping education for their athletes. Individual interviews were conducted with 19 elite or professional level coaches representing the sports of basketball, cricket, hockey, soccer, rowing, ski cross, taekwondo, swimming and triathlon. The findings suggest that although many coaches personally know doping athletes, few believe that athletes will ever be tested. Knowledge of anti-doping control systems, specifically the biological passport and the whereabouts system was very poor. Coaches rarely discuss doping themes with their athletes or other coaches. Taken together these findings paint a worrying picture of the state of coaches’ knowledge of doping and their commitment to anti-doping education and awareness. While anti-doping education must become a standard part of the coaching education process, this should be backed with strict compliance legislation that obliges coaches to take part in continuous education and provide proof that they provide preventive measures for their athletes. Additionally, a professional development plan to ensure that knowledge remains accurate and current may be required.
... Consistent with previous research (Paoli & Donati, 2014), this study indicates that sources (and locations) of supply of doping substances named most often are doctors, other coaches and gymnasiums. Interestingly, however, most of the coaches believed athletes are unlikely to be tested (except in competition), and this belief may explain why many coaches stated that the best way for a doping athlete to avoid detection would be to use banned substances out of competition. ...
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Coaches may have a significant role in an athlete’s decision to use, or not to use, performance enhancing substances. Research suggests that many coaches do not have the confidence or the knowledge to discuss anti-doping issues with their athletes. This study aimed to assess coaches’ awareness of doping practices, coaches’ knowledge of anti-doping control systems (random testing, out of competition testing, the biological passport and the athlete whereabouts system), and coaches’ involvement with anti-doping education for their athletes. Individual interviews were conducted with 19 elite or professional level coaches representing the sports of basketball, cricket, hockey, soccer, rowing, ski cross, taekwondo, swimming, and triathlon. The findings suggest that although many coaches personally know doping athletes, few believe that athletes will ever be tested. Knowledge of anti-doping control systems, specifically the biological passport and the whereabouts system was very poor. Coaches rarely discuss doping themes with their athletes or other coaches. Taken together these findings paint a worrying picture of the state of coaches’ knowledge of doping and their commitment to anti-doping education and awareness. While anti-doping education must become a standard part of the coaching education process, this should be backed with strict compliance legislation that obliges coaches to take part in continuous education and provide proof that they provide preventive measures for their athletes, Additionally, a professional development plan to ensure that knowledge remains accurate and current may be required.
... Thus, the blurred boundaries between the legitimate, grey and illegitimate trading flows are highly reflected in the market for illicit medicines. We are not referring to a case of an illegal trade emerging in the shadows of a legal trade, but the constant and normalised blurring of the boundaries between legal and illegal businesses throughout various stages in the supply chain to the point that they often become symbiotic (see Passas 2002;Naylor 2004;Paoli and Donati 2014). Put in Ruggiero's (1996) terms, the trade is another example of a 'dirty economy', in so far as crime and the legal sector appear to mutually promote entrepreneurship. ...
It has been widely suggested that the global market in counterfeit, falsified and illegally traded medicines has expanded at a tremendous rate in recent years, offering lucrative opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs with little legal risk. However, with a few exceptions, there has been little criminological research conducted on the trade’s actors and organisation. Of the few studies that are available, most position the supply of these products in the context of ‘transnational organised crime’, often presupposing the overwhelming presence of large-scale, hierarchical structures in the trade. This article, based on two extensive research projects in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, offers an account of the illicit supply of medicines in two European jurisdictions. The research outlines the nature and dynamics of the trade including the roles played by each national context as nodes in the global supply chain. The focus then shifts to the modus operandi, actors, online trade and social organisation in both countries. In contradistinction to the ‘transnational organised crime’ narrative, the empirical data outlined in this paper demonstrates that actors and networks involved in the trade are highly flexible and complex structures that straddle the categories of licit and illicit, online and offline, and global and local. This suggests that operations supplying illicit medicines vary largely in terms of size, reach, organisation and legality.
... As a result, and despite the intentions of legislators, crime remained a part of the Victorian commercial sex market as criminals exploited the uncertainty among police and government agencies over who was ultimately responsible for controlling the sex industry. We conceptualize the Victorian sex industry as occupying a space alongside other semiillegal markets like sports doping (Paoli and Donati 2013) or gambling (Haberfeld and Sheehan 2013). Braithwaite (2003) describes these as 'markets in vice' and he includes overeating , drugs, alcohol, tobacco and tax advice. ...
Approaches to social crimes differ widely around the world, with different cultures applying their own standards of what is, or is not, acceptable behaviour. In Australia, the states and territories have been changing their outlook on the sale of sexual services (sex work), those who sell these services (sex workers) and their working environment (brothels). As a multi-jurisdictional federation, there is little consistency to the changes or how commercial sex is treated by the law and police. This chapter explores one type of social crime—commercial sex—and the effects of decriminalisation in the state of Victoria, Australia. Shifting sex work from the criminal law to a more administrative environment makes it a candidate for the process of crime-proofing legislation, a process under theoretical development in Europe aimed at minimising the unintended criminogenic effects of legislative action. We ask how successful is decriminalisation in preventing the criminality associated with commercial sex and whether decriminalisation will prevent or increase such criminality.
... Returning briefly to doping, over the past century, four trends in society and sport explain the growth in the abuse of drugs by athletes. These are the (1) professionalization (or deamateurisation ) of sport and the pursuit of winning over amicable participation; (2) politicisation as exemplified by the drug abuse prevalent in international sporting competition during the Cold War as either side attempted to prove themselves culturally superior to the other; (3) commercialisation, in particular following the communication revolution that enabled broader societal access through radio, television and the internet; and (4) medicalisation with the development since the 1960s of sports medicine, often used as a cover for doping (Paoli & Donati, 2013, p.2). Three of these trends – professionalization, politicisation and commercialisation – are arguably also drivers of most other types of corruption in sport. Furthermore, these three trends illustrate how sport relates and interacts within the three broad sectors of a community – civil society, business and government. ...
Corruption in sport evolving into a global public policy issue. Barely a day goes by without media reports of corruption in one sport or another.
The UNCAC focuses on criminalisation (chapter III) and has sufficient scope to capture corrupt behaviours which have emerged in the sporting world. Article 21 of the UNCAC – bribery in the private sector – needs to be universally adopted to tackle transnational sporting corruption. Much of the focus on anti-corruption has aimed at the corruption of public officials. However, in cases such as FIFA, the traditional notion of bribery is turned on its head. No longer can corruption be viewed simply as private citizens corrupting public officials for private gain – to win the host rights for major sporting events requires public officials to use public funds to corrupt the decision-making processes in private organisations.
Our recent research has shown how established tools for analysing corrupt behaviour in the public sphere can be modified to apply to the sporting world, which is predominantly a private enterprise. While our initial work shows promise, it has also highlighted the resistance private sporting bodies have to public interference in their market – a private market estimated to be worth more than US$141 billion annually. Despite the size of this private market, in the twenty-first century more public funding is being directed into sport in the developed and developing world. Therefore, public policy needs to grapple with what constitutes corruption in what has historically been a private market.
Corruption in sport, like other fields, varies from country to country and sport to sport. As we consistently tell our students – all corruption is not the same and some places are more corrupt than others. Our paper offers a definition of corruption in sport which captures the scope of the problem. We then use the analytical framework to break corruption in sport into types of corruption (doping, match-fixing, host-rights bribery), the activities corrupted (i.e., the participant – athlete, coach, administrator etc.), the sector involved (the particular sport) and the place (city, country, region etc.). From this point, policy-makers are in a position to apply better regulations in response to sport market failures, rather than take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
... The fight against doping has been one of the most profound challenges in the world of sports for many years (Foschi, 2006;Paoli & Donati, 2014). In the last two decades, the sports world has often been rocked by doping scandals, such as the Fuentes or Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) scandals. ...
The fight against doping has been one of the most profound challenges in the world of (media-) sports. However, communication research has not addressed the mediated attribution of responsibility for this problem. Drawing on the distinction between episodic and thematic framing, this study analyzes the attribution of responsibility in three quality German national newspapers. We find that responsibility for causing performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) use is equally attributed to the individual and systemic levels, while responsibility for finding solutions is directed at the systemic level. Individual responsibility attributions occur more frequently in articles with an episodic news frame. Given the often proclaimed ambiguous role of the media with regard to PED use, the study attaches particular importance to the self-attribution of responsibility by the media. Our findings show that the media neglect to discuss their own role and do not see themselves as responsible for the problem of doping. This study demonstrates that the investigation of mediated responsibility attribution provides a fruitful new approach to the research on media and PED use in sports.
... Research on corruption in sport tends to focus on one aspect or another of the issue without examining the whole range. Paoli and Donati's (2013) seminal work, The Sport Doping Market, investigates a significant issue over a long period, providing the first analysis of what this market looks like. However, doping (defined below) is only one type of corruption in sport. ...
How is corruption in sport evolving into a global public policy issue? In the past century, four trends have affected sport according to Paoli and Donati (2013) – de-amateurisation at the turn of the twentieth century, medicalisation since the 1960s, politicisation and commercialisation to the point where sport is now a business worth more than US$141 billion annually. Each of these trends had a corrupting effect on what is generally perceived as a past ‘golden age’ of sport. In the twenty-first century more public funding is being directed into sport in the developed and developing world. As a result this paper will argue organised sport has entered a fifth evolutionary trend – criminalisation. In this latest phase, public policy needs to grapple with what constitutes corruption in what has historically been a private market.
In the past five years involvement of criminals in socially beneficial activities and philanthropy has received increasing attention in the Netherlands. Amateur football clubs appear to be particularly vulnerable to criminal infiltration. This paper presents the results of three exploratory studies conducted to answer two main questions. First, to what extent does criminal infiltration in amateur football occur, who are involved and what are their motives? Second, how may criminal infiltration be better prevented, both by clubs and public institutions? Suspected criminals have been active in amateur football as official and covert sponsors, as clubs’ presidents and coaches, or have misused clubs’ facilities for illegal activities. Our studies showed that in 2020, 19% of Dutch amateur football clubs reported to have been confronted with indications of attempted criminal infiltration and in this year the authorities had 40 cases under investigation. Criminal involvement in amateur football can be explained primarily from the perspective of social embeddedness and the aim to improve one’s status and social acceptation within local communities. Although awareness of the problem has been growing, preventing, detecting and tackling criminal infiltration may still be improved.
Unlabelled:
The theft of medicines is a significant component of the illicit trade in pharmaceutical products. Besides small-scale thefts committed for personal usage, organised criminal networks are increasingly targeting high-priced medical products, either to reintroduce them into the legal supply chain or sell them on the black market. This crime has considerable implications that extend beyond the value of the stolen goods, including harmful impacts on citizens' health, legitimate companies, and national health systems. However, knowledge on organised theft of medicines remains limited. This paper employs a crime script analysis approach, based on interviews with relevant stakeholders and case studies retrieved across European countries, to examine the most common modi operandi in the organised theft of medicines and medical devices. Potential policy implications are also discussed.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10610-023-09546-w.
Monografijoje gvildenamos teisinė ir kriminologinė dimensijos siekiant visapusiškai pažinti sportą – vieną iš žaismingiausių ir kartu konkurencingiausių nūdienos
reiškinių.
Sportas, kaip ne vien sveikatingumą, šlovę ir pagarbą, bet ir didžiulę įtampą
kurstantis šaltinis, yra ypač parankus instrumentas deviacijoms atskleisti. Būtent
sporte nuolat susiduriama su rizikingais poelgiais, o tai, kas visuomenėje laikoma
pavojinga, sporte įgauna kraštutinę prasmę.
Tad įvairūs apgaulingi taisyklių pažeidimai sporte – tai iškristalizuotas visos
visuomenės kuriamas melas, lyg kreivas veidrodis, metaforiškai pabrėžiantis amžinai aktualias kriminologines problemas. Monografijos įžvalgos turėtų padėti tokį
perkreiptą veidrodį „ištiesinti“ atsargiai gludinant jį ir žvelgiant vis iš skirtingos
perspektyvos. Kartu knygos idėjos turėtų paskatinti permąstyti tradicinius teisinius
klausimus apie kaltę, bausmę ir atsakomybę – pirmiausia prieš save pačius.
Like Michael Jackson’s iconic album Thriller, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, performance-enhancing drugs are part of the zeitgeist of the 1980s, a decade of turbulence in the sporting world and one of enlightenment for fans and journalists worldwide. Sport’s dirty little secret was first revealed at the 1983 Pan-American Games, where a throng of positive tests and the mass exodus of (ostensibly) guilty American athletes brought doping to mainstream audiences, and alerted policy makers to a societal ill that could no longer be ignored. Popular anabolic drugs like Dianabol and Testosterone Depot had been in wide use for decades, and in the absence of rigorous controls – both anti-doping and statutory – spread like wildfire in elite sport, bodybuilding, and gym culture. By the mid-1980s gaining access to them was all but a formality, as simple as paying a visit to one’s family physician, the resident dealer at Gold’s Gym, or the local discus champion peddling Mexican steroids to make ends meet. While chemical enhancement in this era is well-represented in the extant literature, relatively little has been said about how these drugs fell in the hands of users. Each of the three articles in this volume survey a different supply source for performance-enhancing drugs in the 1980s. In the first study, I profile the enigmatic doping physician Robert Kerr, an open advocate for the safe
x
use of anabolic steroids under medical supervision. After prescribing the drugs for more than seventeen years, Kerr embraced the role of anti-doping advocate, appearing as an expert witness in several government-led hearings in the late 1980s. In the second study, I investigate a drug-smuggling incident at Montreal’s Mirabel Airport. On 31 October 1983, four of Canada’s premier weightlifters were arrested after border agents discovered a cache of anabolic steroids in each of their bags. The men had purchased them from Soviet lifters for resale on home soil. The third essay chronicles the rise and fall of America’s largest steroid distribution ring, and as a parallel narrative, an anti-steroid counteroffensive headed by the FBI. Combined, these studies provide historical context for the proliferation of doping agents in North America, and the efforts of sports federations and politicians to remedy the problem.
This chapter explores the illicit production and supply of performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) markets in Belgium and the Netherlands. Aside from the potential health risks related to the use of these substances, a concern is that the majority of PIEDs are not legally obtained through a physician, by means of a prescription, but instead are illegally purchased on the black market. The illicit supply of PIEDs will be the focus of this chapter. This chapter provides a historical account of the development of illicit PIED markets in Belgium and the Netherlands. Next, a categorization of supplier types will be provided based on the profession of PIED suppliers. This will be followed with an examination of the methods and motives of PIED dealers, using bodybuilding as a case study. It is highlighted that many types of suppliers are involved in the trade of PIEDs and that they are driven by multiple and often overlapping reasons (financial and non-financial motives). In the final section, the link between the illicit PIED market, organized crime and professional sport is critically explored. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the overall findings.
Osrednja etična dilema sodobnega športa je vprašanje dopinga.
Mnogo razprav, časa in denarja je usmerjenega v boj
proti dopingu. Doping je namreč nelegalen, zato naj bi bil
slab in nemoralen. Le redko pa je mogoče zaslediti pogled z
druge strani. Ob vsej energiji, usmerjeni v boj proti dopingu,
se zdi, da pozabljamo, zakaj je doping v športu sploh prisoten.
Blažiti simptome nima smisla, če si nismo vsaj nekoliko
na jasnem glede vzrokov bolezni. Nenazadnje je za uspešen
boj potrebno poznati sovražnika, proti kateremu se borimo.
Zakaj je doping prisoten v športu, zaradi katerih razlogov
ga športniki uporabljajo in zakaj so nekateri prepričani, da
bi doping morali dopustiti, ga legalizirati? Razmislek nima
namena rušiti prizadevanj za šport brez dopinga, ampak želi
opozoriti na kompleksnost situacije in neprimernost pavšalnih
obsodb športnikov, saj smo sokrivci za problem dopinga
v športu vsi.
//
The central ethical dilemma of modern sport is the issue of
doping. A lot of discussion, time and money goes into the
fight against doping. Because doping is illegal, it is bad and
immoral. Rarely can one see the view from the other side.
With all our energy focused on the fight against doping, it
seems that we are forgetting why doping is present in sport.
It does not make much sense to cure the symptoms unless
we are clear about the causes of the disease. A successful
battle requires knowing what the enemy is. Why is doping
present in sports, what are the reasons for athletes to use it,
and why are some convinced that doping should be allowed
and legalized? The aim of this paper is not to ruin the pursuit
of sports without doping, but wants to draw attention to
the complexity of the situation and the inappropriateness of
general convictions of athletes, because all of us are in a part
responsible for the problem of doping in sports.
This chapter reviews the intricate structure of documents compiled by WADA to discover the main ideas in the WADA code and standards regarding the gathering of data, testing and sanctioning. Additionally, it focuses on the organisational structure within the context of doping, which includes most national and international sport federations. The aim is to understand how intelligence and information is exchanged between these organisations and how can it be used to apprehend athletes that contravene WADA’s Code. It describes the testing process on both urine and blood samples, the whereabouts requirement, WADA’s prohibited list, the athletes’ biological passports with their importance and role, the athletes’ rights and responsibilities as well as their ability to challenge doping findings. It discusses the strict liability principle applied in cases where an athlete is caught doping and the athletes’ right to appeal in such cases.
Aufgrund der Tatsache, dass bereits in den anderen Beiträgen dieses Werkes ausführlich auf die Projektziele des Forschungsvorhabens eingegangen wird, sollen an dieser Stelle in aller Kürze nur eine allgemeine Problemdarstellung und die Projektziele hinsichtlich des Rechtstatsachenforschungsteils vorgestellt werden. Eine ausführlichere Diskussion der Projektteile des kriminologischen Moduls innerhalb des Forschungsvorhabens erfolgt im Kapitel über die Durchführung und angewandte Methode.
Traditionally policymakers have paid little attention to the consumption of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. Yet, in recent times PIEDs have come to occupy an increasing amount of discursive space and, indeed, regulatory action. This newfound interest may be attributed to several broader developments, not least the perception of the involvement of organized crime in distributing PIEDs to the professional sports world and other sectors of this illicit market. This paper seeks to explore the empirical reality of the claim that the production and supply of PIEDs in Australia is the prerogative of organized crime groups. A retrospective content analysis of Australian PIED provider cases was conducted between 2010 and 2016. To widen our search, both media articles describing court cases, obtained from the Factiva database, and public online court records, using the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) database, were searched. Search terms included “steroid*”, “doping” and “testosterone” in combination with the terms “traffic*”, “production”, “supply*” and “import*”. In total, 477 PIED provider cases were identified yet most cases were duplicates, irrelevant or lacked sufficient detail, resulting in a final dataset of 144 cases. A coding schedule was developed based on existing PIED supply literature. Our data shows that most PIED provider cases took place in Queensland (41.7%), followed by New South Wales (25%) and Victoria (13.2%). Regarding the type of providers, the largest group consisted of people active in the gym industry (22%), followed by the healthcare sector (17%), the ‘other’ category (12%) and the security sphere (8%). Of the 144 steroid-provider cases, only 12% of the cases indicated the potential involvement of organized crime groups, with half of those being linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs. In contrast to the claims of authorities, our data suggests that organized crime groups currently play a proportionally small role in the illicit production and supply of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs in Australia. Indeed, various actors are involved of which only a small fraction are part of or involved with organized crime groups. Many suppliers are particularly active in the gym industry and healthcare sector. The relative presence of such suppliers has important policy implications, not least with regard to the role of criminal law in addressing the provision of PIEDs.
While discussion on corruption in sport is intensifying and football match-fixing in particular is attracting increasing attention, new fixing scandals emerge offering new accounts of actors and corrupt practices within the football industry and the level of the external threat to the sport. The scandal exposure of fixed matches in Turkey in 2011 sheds light on the fixing of 17 matches played in the 2010/11 football season and allowed for insights to the actors, structure and processes behind the fix. Following four criminal and seven disciplinary proceedings, the case is still pending appeal for its final decision, involving a total of 93 suspects and having already resulted in the exclusion of two teams from European competitions. The evidence collected by the authorities points towards a hierarchical criminal organisation led by the President of a football club that arranged and coordinated the fixing in order for his team to win the national Championship. The aim of this article is to provide an account of the organisation and coordination of match-fixing in Turkey, with its actors, specifics and criminal characteristics, while offering an examination of match-fixing for sporting success, the least documented type of match-fixing.
This chapter explores the cultural and technological factors contributing to the growing consumption of illicit medicines bought online. First it contextualises the UK consumer/patient in the virtual world. Next, drawing on ethnographic research data, it offers an advanced understanding of the consumer decision-making processes and other contributing factors that influence the purchase of medicines online. Finally, it reveals the social groups most at risk of buying and consuming illicit medicines online in the UK. Distribution of illicit medicines to these groups is theorised in the broad contexts of (1) changing cultures of pharmaceutical consumption and healthcare practice and (2) the effects of digital technologies operating in broader politico-economic structures and processes.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids are performance and image enhancing drugs (PIED) that can improve endurance and athletic performance, reduce body fat and stimulate muscle growth. The use of steroids has been studied extensively in the medical and psychological literature, as well as in the sociology of sport, health and masculinity. From the late 2000s, the worldwide trade in steroids increased significantly. However, trafficking in steroids remains a largely under-researched criminological phenomenon with a few notable exceptions. Currently in the UK there are only small and fragmented pieces of information available relating to steroids trafficking in autobiographical accounts of professional criminals. Drawing on original empirical data, the purpose of this article is to provide an account of the social organization of the steroids trafficking business in the UK. The trade in steroids is decentralized, highly flexible with no hierarchies, and open to anyone willing to either order the merchandise online or travel to producing countries and obtain steroids in bulk from legitimate manufacturers. The patterns of trafficking of this specific type of substance are patently conditioned by its embeddedness in the gym/bodybuilding scene and this greatly affects relations between actors in the business. In the steroids market, one typically encounters a multitude of individuals likely to drift between legality and illegality, online and offline, use and supply.
This paper provides an introduction to the articles, report excerpts and book reviews submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime bringing forward numerous empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on sports, corruption and ‘organized crime’.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) were the first identified doping agents that have ergogenic effects and are being used to increase muscle mass and strength in adult males. Consequently, athletes are still using them to increase physical performance and bodybuilders are using them to improve size and cosmetic appearance. The prevalence of AAS use has risen dramatically over the last two decades and filtered into all aspects of society. Support for AAS users has increased, but not by the medical profession, who will not accept that AAS use dependency is a psychiatric condition. The adverse effects and potential dangers of AAS use have been well documented. AAS are used in sport by individuals who have acquired knowledge of the half-lives of specific drugs and the dosages and cycles required to avoid detection. Conversely, they are used by bodybuilders in extreme dosages with the intention of gaining muscle mass and size, with little or no regard for the consequences. Polypharmacy by self-prescription is prevalent in this sector. Most recently, AAS use has filtered through to ‘recreational street drug’ users and is the largest growth of drugs in this subdivision. They are taken to counteract the anorexic and cachectic effects of the illegal psychotropic street drugs. Screening procedures for AAS in World Anti-Doping Agency accredited laboratories are comprehensive and sensitive and are based mainly on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, although liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry is becoming increasingly more valuable. The use of carbon isotope mass spectrometry is also of increasing importance in the detection of natural androgen administration, particularly to detect testosterone administration. There is a degree of contentiousness in the scenario of AAS drug use, both within and outside sport. AAS and associated doping agents are not illegal per se. Possession is not an offence, despite contravening sporting regulations and moral codes. Until AAS are classified in the same capacity as street drugs in the UK, where possession becomes a criminal offence, they will continue to attract those who want to win at any cost. The knowledge acquired by such work can only assist in the education of individuals who use such doping agents, with a view to minimizing health risks and hopefully once again create a level playing field in sport.
Résumé
Envisagée comme une pratique sociale, la conduite dopante ne peut être saisie que dans une relation à un univers symbolique qui lui donne un sens. Dès lors qu’une société voue un culte quasi unanime à la réussite individuelle, au progrès, à la puissance et à l’esthétique corporelle, chacun semble avoir le devoir de modeler son corps, le rendre plus performant avec des moyens licites ou illicites. Cette attitude expliquerait l’attrait grandissant pour certains produits dopants (qui tendent à gagner en popularité en France et en Europe), non seulement dans le monde du sport de compétition, mais aussi dans les différents espaces sociaux. Dans ce contexte, comment alors expliquer les résistances ainsi que les variations d’usage de produits dopants selon les sports et les univers sociaux ? L’une des réponses sociologiques possibles est que, selon le rapport au corps des personnes et leur « éthique faite corps », le recours et l’usage (occasionnel ou régulier) des produits dopants seront différents. L’attitude dopante traduirait alors un rapport libéral au corps que l’on peut qualifier provisoirement d’ hexis libérale.
The 1998 Festina affair marked the beginning of the end of an era for professional cycling: the one of doping organized by the teams themselves. For a decade an intensification of the controls, the suspension policy towards doped cyclists and the media's inquisitive attitude have led cyclists to reconsider doping behaviour as deviant whereas it was sub-culturally legitimated until the end of the 1990s as a consequence of a secondary socialisation favourable to the development of a professional culture of doping. Redefined as an infringement and an offence against athletic meritocracy, doping, when used by the cyclists, is now more part of an informal network that transcends the historical cycling solidarity. This article aims at clarifying this reconfiguration of the standards and practices showing that the anti-doping fight is also the cause of the current two-tier cycling.
The field of white-collar/corporate crime has been studied by scholars from many disciplinary fields. Yet, the ambiguity and complexity of the subject, dearth of program and policy evaluation, poor or inaccessible data and lack of systematic empirical research has precluded any consensus about its causes or what can be done to prevent and control it. Concern about the global financial crisis of 2008 and its association with fraudulent activities in the mortgage and securities markets has brought white-collar crime back to the forefront of criminological inquiry. New research—particularly evidence-based criminology and criminal justice and vignette studies of corporate crime—has provided insight into some of the longstanding debates in the field while also revealing new and interesting puzzles for scholars to explore. These new developments are summarized along with suggestions for new research on mortgage fraud, including the revitalization of a "criminogenic tier" approach to organizational actors, firms, and markets, and the use of network analysis as a means to map and measure key ties among fraudsters, network centrality, and reach.
The aim of this study was to gather information into the principal methods and means employed to supply adolescents with doping agents and others substances used to improve their sporting performance. We conducted a nation wide study in France among adolescent athletes, using a self-completed questionnaire. Exploitable questionnaires (n = 6402) were returned, corresponding to 48.9% for the girls and 51.1% for the boys, both aged on average from 16.1 ± 2.2 years. These adolescents practise on average 10.0 ± 5.2 hours of sport per week. 21.9% participate on a national or international competition level. Of our respondents, 4.0% (95% confidence interval: 3.5% - 4.5%) say they have been enticed into using products which are prohibited for athletes. 10.3% of the adolescents say that they have received substances to improve their performance at least once from an average of two different people. It was mostly a friend, their parents and the family doctor. On average, in 33.2% of the cases, the adolescent received the product without asking for it, and in nearly half the cases (46.6%), the adolescent paid for the product. We feel that it is necessary to better understand the ways in which this black market functions: for example; the initial sources of the products sold, the number and the 'profiles' of the dealers, the general organisation of the market and the sums of money involved. Key PointsThis study confirms the existence of a 'black market' for products to improve performance, which is directed at adolescent athletes engaged in high-level competitions.This market is characterized by its ease of accessibility and also the diversity of its 'suppliers', the two main sources being friends and parents.
While the pharmaceutical industry arguably has the worst record of serious corporate crime of any industry, international law evasion rather than outright law violation has been the biggest problem in the industry. To understand how these problems can be and are being brought under control, a legal-pluralist analysis is needed that decenters criminal enforcement by the state. Consumer and professional activism and a variety of levels of self-regulation in combination with state, regional, and international regulation are all important to understanding how progress is possible. Creative work within this web of controls can actually transform lowest-common- denominator regulation into highest-common-factor regulation and self-regulation when actors are capable of thinking strategically in world-system terms.
Only banal generalizations are possible in answer to questions of who engages in white collar crime and why. Doubt is cast on the common assertion that firms in financial difficulty are more likely to offend than profitable ones. Qualitative studies of how white collar offenses are perpetrated and how regulatory agencies seek to control offenses constitute the most illuminating part of the literature. This literature depicts consistent pressure for blame for white collar crime to be passed downwards in the class structure, widespread use of international law evasion strategies, and a preference of control agencies for informal, “direct action” modes of social control over litigious regulation. The thesis that the latter reflects “capture” by ruling class interests is critically examined. It is contended that community attitudes toward white collar crime have become increasingly punitive. The review concludes that theoretical progress is most likely via organization theory paradigms, but that partition of ...
This article examines the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which was established following the World Conference on Doping in Sport convened by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and held in Lausanne in 1999. More specifically, the article draws upon Elias's game models to analyse: i) the way in which the IOC sought to manage this process of change in such a way that its longstanding position as the world's leading anti-doping organization would be reinforced; and ii) the IOC's inability to control this process, with the result that the IOC failed to achieve any of its objectives, its position as the world's anti-doping organization was actually undermined, and world leadership passed to a new organization which had a significant measure of independence from the IOC.
This final report aims to derive ways for the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority (henceforth FSA, see FSA website ) to allocate its resources against a range of financial crimes in an evidence-based and intellectually defensible manner. The report recommends the development of two top-level indicators, representing what can be known or estimated (i) about harmful impacts of financial crimes and (ii) about their amenability to FSA actions. Drawing methodologies for developments of (i) and (ii) from existing analysis of and research on the three main ‘branches’ of crime that are of concern to the FSA – frauds, money laundering and market abuse – we suggest that these methodologies be further developed and applied in comparative work across all such crimes. The outcome would be that the management of the FSA, when considering resource allocation, would be able to take into account adverse impacts and amenability to control of specific financial crimes. A top-level impact indicator would draw upon three forms of data: discernable market movements generated by financial crimes; complainants generated; and costs generated. ‘Response costs’ (costs of activities in anticipation and ex post facto management of financial crime) should be excluded from this analysis, because to include those costs would include an inappropriate positive feedback mechanism in decision-making. A top-level amenability indicator would take account of whether victims and resistant-to-victimisation persons/firms perceive particular forms of FC as being amenable to specific FSA measures (including advice, supervision and enforcement); whether perpetrators do; and whether firms’ risk, audit and compliance departments/officers do (for some or all of their business sectors). Crimes that are both of high impact (in terms relevant to the FSA) and highly amenable (to control by the FSA) would be prime candidates for prioritisation of resources by the FSA. Crimes that are of low amenability as well as being of low impact would normally be candidates for less intense action by the FSA. Other combinations, for example high impacts and low amenability, are more problematic. At various places throughout this report we make some asides as to what is known about levels of impacts and amenability of various financial crimes, however it would be premature to try to draw that picture fully now. The full picture would be the outcome of the work that we recommend. (For the FSA's statement when publishing this paper, please go to fsa.gov.uk, What we do, Fighting financial crime, The Scale & Impact of Financial Crime, Paper II.)
Since 2004, when the World Anti-Doping Agency assumed the responsibility for establishing and maintaining the list of prohibited substances and methods in sport (i.e. the Prohibited List), cannabinoids have been prohibited in all sports during competition. The basis for this prohibition can be found in the World Anti-Doping Code, which defines the three criteria used to consider banning a substance. In this context, we discuss the potential of cannabis to enhance sports performance, the risk it poses to the athlete's health and its violation of the spirit of sport. Although these compounds are prohibited in-competition only, we explain why the pharmacokinetics of their main psychoactive compound, Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol, may complicate the results management of adverse analytical findings. Passive inhalation does not appear to be a plausible explanation for a positive test. Although the prohibition of cannabinoids in sports is one of the most controversial issues in anti-doping, in this review we stress the reasons behind this prohibition, with strong emphasis on the evolving knowledge of cannabinoid pharmacology.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are widely used illicitly to gain muscle and lose body fat. Here we review the accumulating human and animal evidence showing that AAS may cause a distinct dependence syndrome, often associated with adverse psychiatric and medical effects.
We present an illustrative case of AAS dependence, followed by a summary of the human and animal literature on this topic, based on publications known to us or obtained by searching the PubMed database.
About 30% of AAS users appear to develop a dependence syndrome, characterized by chronic AAS use despite adverse effects on physical, psychosocial or occupational functioning. AAS dependence shares many features with classical drug dependence. For example, hamsters will self-administer AAS, even to the point of death, and both humans and animals exhibit a well-documented AAS withdrawal syndrome, mediated by neuroendocrine and cortical neurotransmitter systems. AAS dependence may particularly involve opioidergic mechanisms. However, AAS differ from classical drugs in that they produce little immediate reward of acute intoxication, but instead a delayed effect of muscle gains. Thus standard diagnostic criteria for substance dependence, usually crafted for acutely intoxicating drugs, must be adapted slightly for cumulatively acting drugs such as AAS.
AAS dependence is a valid diagnostic entity, and probably a growing public health problem. AAS dependence may share brain mechanisms with other forms of substance dependence, especially opioid dependence. Future studies are needed to characterize AAS dependence more clearly, identify risk factors for this syndrome and develop treatment strategies.
The use of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AS) is perceived by the media, by segments of the sports medicine and athletic communities, and by the public to have grown to epidemic proportions. Unfortunately, the incidence and prevalence of AS use among elite, amateur, and recreational athletes is poorly documented. This study was designed to help identify AS use patterns among the male portion of the general adolescent population. The overall participation rate on a schoolwide basis was 68.7% and on an individual basis reached 50.3%. Participants in this investigation were 12th-grade male students (N = 3403) in 46 private and public high schools across the nation who completed a questionnaire that established current or previous use of AS as well as user and nonuser characteristics. Results indicate that 6.6% of 12th grade male students use or have used AS and that over two thirds of the user group initiated use when they were 16 years of age or younger. Approximately 21% of users reported that a health professional was their primary source. The evidence indicates that educational intervention strategies should begin as early as junior high school; the intervention should not be directed only toward those individuals who participate in school-based athletics.
Supraphysiologic doses of testosterone are associated with increased aggression that is hypothesized to be a function of testosterone serum concentrations, mood, and personality. The study attempted to characterize this relationship among weightlifters who were users (n = 10) and nonusers (n = 18) of anabolic steroids. Participants were interviewed using the Modified Mania Rating Scale and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression to assess mood, the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI) and Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm (PSAP) to assess aggression, and the Personality Disorder Questionnaire (PDQ-R) to assess personality. Blood samples were obtained for the determination of total, free, and weakly bound testosterone. Comparisons of continuous variables between testosterone users and non-users were performed with a parametric (unpaired t-test) or non-parametric (Mann-Whitney) test where appropriate. Correlations with testosterone were examined separately for testosterone users and non-users, using Spearman rank correlation. The subjective (BDHI) and objective (PSAP) assessments of aggression found that supranormal testosterone concentrations were associated with increased aggression. However, the PDQ-R results suggest that this finding was confounded by the personality disorder profile of the steroid users, because steroid users demonstrated Cluster B personality disorder traits for antisocial, borderline, and histrionic personality disorder.
Despite widespread violations, doping is attributed in public discourse almost exclusively to the inappropriate behavior of individual persons. Athletes, trainers, sports functionaries, doctors or pharmacists find themselves confronted with accusations of having performed, supported or accepted perfidious deceptions in order to increase athletic performance or to overcome real or even only putative disadvantages compared to competitors. The individuals are supposedly motivated by excessive success orientation, moral deficiencies, greed, motives of power or craving for fame. When sports federations, media, the law and pedagogics, and even the majority of critics themselves focus primarily on persons and their actions in doping and thus create a skewed reality, it is the task of sociology to oppose this widespread observation scheme and supplant it with a more complex version of reality. This would not relativize or excuse the inappropriate behavior of individual persons, but rather set it in a wider context. In a sociological perspective, one thing is certain: doping has not befallen high-performance sport as a sort of inexplicable sudden curse, nor it is a matter which can be easily deduced from the personality inventory of individual athletes, trainers, functionaries or doctors. Doping appears much more as a "normal accident", which occurs over and over due to precisely-identifiable social conditions. This idea will be presented below in three steps. First, the decisive constellation actors will be identified which provide the structural impetus for the tendency towards doping. Then doping will be discussed as an illegitimate innovation. And the final focus will draw conclusions under the motto "constellation management" aimed at future preventive work.
In this article we engage in an extended critique of the thesis that the illegal conduct of corporations necessarily calls for different forms of regulation than other kinds of law-breaking. The proponents of that view argue that the unique nature of such illegalities is one reason why they necessitate a particular type of enforcement attitude or response. They advocate a strategy that produces compliance through persuasion rather than through the threat of sanctions. Another reason advanced is that corporations are not, as many would have it, 'amoral calculators', but rather 'political citizens' who may indeed sometimes err but are more prone to organizational incompetence than deliberate wrongdoing. Thus they need advice rather than chastisement: regulatory agencies should act as consultants rather than policemen. We will take each element of this argument in turn and show that it is neither logically nor empirically persuasive. We will then turn to the issue of how to make corporate regulation more effective and show that this requires a consideration of both the most suitable strategies for the enforcement agencies to adopt and the most appropriate legal framework for determining the criminal responsibility of these corporations. © 1990 The Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency.
Heroin is universally considered the world's most harmful illegal drug. This is due not only to the damaging effects of the drug itself, but also to the spread of AIDS tied to its use. Burgeoning illegal mass consumption in the 1960s and 1970s has given rise to a global market for heroin and other opiates of nearly 16 million users. The production and trafficking of opiates have caused crime, disease, and social distress throughout the world, leading many nations to invest billions of dollars trying to suppress the industry. The failure of their efforts has become a central policy concern. Can the world heroin supply actually be cut, and with what consequences? The result of a five-year-long research project involving extensive fieldwork in six Asian countries, Colombia, and Turkey, this book presents a systematic analysis of the contemporary world heroin market, delving into its development and structure, its participants, and its socio-economic impact. It provides a sound and comprehensive empirical base for concluding that there is little opportunity to shrink the global supply of heroin in the long term, and explains why production is concentrated in a handful of countries-and is likely to remain that way. On the basis of these findings, the chapters identify a key set of policy opportunities, largely local, and make suggestions for leveraging them. This book also offers new insights into market conditions in India, Tajikistan, and other countries that have been greatly harmed by the production and trafficking of illegal opiates.
Intensive Sport and Dopings Amid Standards and Deviances
In the dominant representations, doping is a recent and monolithic problem associated with essentially economic external interests. The phenomenon would appear to be a degeneration of sports and the doper a deviant. This article casts doubt on these presuppositions and examines doping as an internal contradiction of the institution. In the first place, it examines the assumption of intensive sport as addictive behaviour, with or without doping agents and, in the second place, it examines the incidences of the institution on significant cases of intensive practices. Addiction is then considered as a form of overadaptation. Finally, these results make it possible to reconsider the paradoxical standard, which is applied to sports.
The analysis of stories of life of five doped, professional cyclists during the 1990s updates, through the notion of career, a progressive registration of the dopantes practices in the career of the cyclists, those, going together with a greater rationalization of the procedures of training. The progressive gliding of the individuals of the common world to the extraordinary high-level one, brings these doped cyclists not to feel as such. Following the example of the collective process of the abnormality shown by H.S Becker, the pharmacological evolution as well as the fall of the system of standards in health, and in ethics are the result of the numerous interactions with the peers cyclist, leaders but also the doctors of the sport who supervise them.
This review highlights the importance of recognizing the possibility for doing harm when intentions are good. It describes several examples showing that well-planned and adequately executed programs provide no guarantee for safety or efficacy. The author concludes with recommendations for scientifically credible evaluations to promote progress in the field of crime prevention.
The use of drugs to enhance performance has been a feature of athletic competition since ancient times. This review discusses the use of anabolic steroids and stimulants by athletes to improve performance during the later half of the nineteenth century and during most of the twentieth century. Included are discussions of the development and medical background of testosterone and anabolic steroids, how the use of steroids progressed from medical use to use in sport and, with the rapid expansion of testosterone and steroid use in sport during the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of adverse health effects that lead to the initial banning of steroids in sports and the development of drug testing programmes. Links between stimulant use, war and sport during the 1930s and 1940s, the impact of stimulant use on post-war sport, and the prevalence of stimulant use in North American society and sport prior to 1970, including the deaths of several elite cyclists, are discussed in the second part of this review.
Since the beginning of the modern Olympic Games, women have struggled to participate as equals. One important aspect of women's struggle for inclusion involves the rules of eligibility to compete in the Olympic Games. This article examines the current status of women in the ‘reformed’ Olympic Movement by considering the number of events in which women participate, the nature or duration of those events, the number of competitive opportunities available to women and the language used by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Federations (IFs) to refer to men and women. A content analysis of the eligibility rules of participation found that the Olympic Charter and the rulebooks of eight IFs stipulate differential treatment of women. The article argues that these rules mandate and normalize inequitable treatment, and thus create inequitable opportunities for female athletes. The inequality that these rules perpetuate demonstrates that the IOC's reform process is not yet complete.
Insider Trading and the Coase TheoremWhy Firms Might Want to Allocate the Property Rights in Valuable Information to Managers as Opposed to ShareholdersThe Arguments against Insider TradingLegal Rules Restricting Insider TradingSummary and Conclusion
Illegal enterprise—defined as the sale of illegal goods and services to customers who know that the goods or services are illegal—has long been a central part of the American underworld, but it has received little attention as a separate criminological category. Although such activities are often relatively short term and small scale when compared with legal businesses, three major factors explain the cooperation that sometimes emerges among illegal entrepreneurs. The first factor is systematic corruption, which often permits police or politicians to bring order to illegal activities within a political subdivision. A second factor is overlapping partnerships by which entrepreneurs often launch and maintain illegal businesses. A third factor is the internal economic characteristics of illegal businesses, which shape the manner in which they operate. The paper explores the implications of each factor through historical examples and suggests hypotheses concerning the changing structure of illegal enterprises in American cities.
Recent experience of supply reduction activities in a major opium-producing country, Pakistan, is reviewed. It is concluded that international efforts to reduce the supply of illicit drugs are ineffective, inadvertently promote use of more dangerous forms of drugs and exacerbate health problems in supplier countries. In addition, source country supply reduction activities are associated with serious unintended negative consequences, including corruption and poor governance in supplier countries. This leads to a vicious circle as these adverse social consequences make it harder to restrict drug production.
Blood doping practices in sports have been around for at least half a century and will likely remain for several years to come. The main reason for the various forms of blood doping to be common is that they are easy to perform, and the effects on exercise performance are gigantic. Yet another reason for blood doping to be a popular illicit practice is that detection is difficult. For autologous blood transfusions, for example, no direct test exists, and the direct testing of misuse with recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEpo) has proven very difficult despite a test exists. Future blood doping practice will likely include the stabilization of the transcription factor hypoxia-inducible factor which leads to an increased endogenous erythropoietin synthesis. It seems unrealistic to develop specific test against such drugs (and the copies hereof originating from illegal laboratories). In an attempt to detect and limit blood doping, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has launched the Athlete Biological Passport where indirect markers for all types of blood doping are evaluated on an individual level. The approach seemed promising, but a recent publication demonstrates the system to be incapable of detecting even a single subject as 'suspicious' while treated with rhEpo for 10-12 weeks. Sad to say, the hope that the 2012 London Olympics should be cleaner in regard to blood doping seems faint. We propose that WADA strengthens the quality and capacities of the National Anti-Doping Agencies and that they work more efficiently with the international sports federations in an attempt to limit blood doping.
The aim of this study was to determine the extent of doping drug use among adolescents in Uppsala, Sweden, and to analyse the main reasons for the use. An anonymous multiple-choice questionnaire was distributed among pupils in the first and the third grades at high school; 2,742 pupils participated in the study. The results showed that 2.7% of the male and 0.4% of the female adolescents had used doping drugs at some time in their life. However, knowledge of how to get doping drugs far exceeded use. The main reasons for using doping drugs were to improve appearance and to enhance performance in sports. Some boys self-reported side effects of AAS. Despite the still predominantly negative attitude toward doping prevention programs have to be taken.
Critics of the international drug-control regime contend that supply-oriented policy interventions are not just ineffective, but, in focusing almost exclusively on supply reduction, they also produce unintended adverse consequences. Evidence from the world heroin market supports their claims. The balance of the effects of policy is yet unknown, but the prospect of adverse consequences underlies a central paradox of contemporary supply-oriented policy. In this paper, we evaluate whether harm reduction, a subject of intense debate in the demand-oriented drug-policy community, can provide a unifying foundation for supply-oriented drug policy and speak more directly to policy goals. Our analysis rests on an extensive review of the literature on harm reduction and draws insight from other policy communities' disciplines and methods. First, we explore the paradoxes of supply-oriented policy that initially motivated our interest in harm reduction; second, we consider the conceptual and technical challenges that have contributed to the debate on harm reduction and assess their relevance to a supply-oriented application; third, we examine responses to those challenges, i.e., various tools (taxonomies, models, and measurement strategies), that can be used to identify, categorize, and assess harms. Despite substantial conceptual and technical challenges, we find that harm reduction can provide a basis for assessing the net consequences of supply-oriented drug policy, choosing more rigorously amongst policy options, and identifying new options. In addition, we outline a practical path forward for assessing harms and policy options. On the basis of our analysis, we suggest pursuing a harm-based approach and making a clearer distinction between supply-oriented and supply-reduction policy.
The Athlete Blood Passport is the most recent tool adopted by anti-doping authorities to detect athletes using performance-enhancing drugs such as recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO). This strategy relies on detecting abnormal variations in haematological variables caused by doping, against a background of biological and analytical variability. Ten subjects were given twice weekly intravenous injections of rhEPO for up to 12 weeks. Full blood counts were measured using a Sysmex XE-2100 automated haematology analyser, and total haemoglobin mass via a carbon monoxide rebreathing test. The sensitivity of the passport to flag abnormal deviations in blood values was evaluated using dedicated Athlete Blood Passport software. Our treatment regimen elicited a 10% increase in total haemoglobin mass equivalent to approximately two bags of reinfused blood. The passport software did not flag any subjects as being suspicious of doping whilst they were receiving rhEPO. We conclude that it is possible for athletes to use rhEPO without eliciting abnormal changes in the blood variables currently monitored by the Athlete Blood Passport.
In the Netherlands an estimated 20,000 people use anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS). The use of AAS is particularly common in regular visitors to gyms and fitness centres. AAS are usually synthetic derivatives of testosterone with both an anabolic and an androgenic effect. AAS have many side effects like liver damage (oral use) or infections (intramuscular use), which can be explained partly by the androgenic effect and partly by the manner of use. Many of these side effects are only reported in case studies and have not been systematically investigated.
The current drastic escalation in obesity may be contributing to the exponential rise in drugs used for image enhancement. Drugs such as anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are perceived as a viable method of achieving a perfect physique. They are also the most widely abused drugs in sport. The Internet has encouraged the abuse of expensive drugs, particularly human growth hormone (hGH), resulting in increased importation for personal use. The substantial increase in this market has opened up avenues for counterfeiting, estimated as a multi-million pound business. The acute adverse effects from contaminated vials may result in a variety of pathologies including communicable diseases. In 2007, in the UK, a series of intramuscular abscesses, requiring surgical treatment, led us to study samples obtained from the underground market.
The analysis of 38 parenteral samples and 19 oral samples of tablets was performed by a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory, in an attempt to establish the extent of available counterfeit products. Fifty-three per cent (20) of the injectable AAS esters and 21% (4) of the oral tablets were counterfeit. Culture and sensitivity revealed the presence of skin commensal organisms, which may have contributed to the development of the abscesses. Users of AAS and hGH for sport, including bodybuilding, are currently risking their health because of counterfeit and poorly controlled products. Copyright
Anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) dependence has been a recognized syndrome for some 20 years, but remains poorly understood.
We evaluated three groups of experienced male weightlifters: (1) men reporting no history of AAS use (N=72); (2) nondependent AAS users reporting no history of AAS dependence (N=42); and (3) men meeting adapted DSM-IV criteria for current or past AAS dependence (N=20). We assessed demographic indices, lifetime history of psychiatric disorders by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, variables related to AAS use, and results from drug tests of urine and hair.
Nondependent AAS users showed no significant differences from AAS nonusers on any variable assessed. Dependent AAS users, however, differed substantially from both other groups on many measures. Notably, they reported a more frequent history of conduct disorder than nondependent AAS users (odds ratio [95% CI]: 8.0 [1.7, 38.0]) or AAS nonusers (13.1 [2.8, 60.4]) and a much higher lifetime prevalence of opioid abuse and dependence than either comparison group (odds ratios 6.3 [1.2, 34.5] and 18.6 [3.0, 116.8], respectively).
Men with AAS dependence, unlike nondependent AAS users or AAS nonusers, showed a distinctive pattern of comorbid psychopathology, overlapping with that of individuals with other forms of substance dependence. AAS dependence showed a particularly strong association with opioid dependence - an observation that recalls recent animal data suggesting similarities in AAS and opioid brain reward mechanisms. Individuals with AAS dependence and individuals with "classical" substance dependence may possibly harbor similar underlying biological and neuropsychological vulnerabilities.
Performance- and image-enhancing drugs have the potential to be a significant public health issue. Detailed data on PIEDs injection are difficult to obtain because of the illicit and unsupervised way in which many PIEDs are used, and the hidden nature of the group. Our study examines the patterns of use, risk behaviours and related harm associated with PIEDs injection. We also report the ways in which PIEDs users currently seek injecting equipment and harm-reduction advice.
Data were obtained via a structured questionnaire administered in face-to-face interviews with 60 men who used PIEDs (primarily anabolic androgenic steroids) for non-medical purposes.
Although the rates of needle sharing were low (5%), the men more frequently reported re-use of needles/equipment, injecting from a shared container (bladders, vials, etc.), injecting other illicit drugs, injecting insulin and targeting small muscle groups. Self-reports of being hepatitis C antibody positive were associated with lifetime use of heroin and injection of other illicit drugs. All HIV positive participants were gay/bisexual men. Participants reported a range of other injection-related injuries and diseases such as fevers, scarring and abscesses. 'Risky' injectors (38% of participants) were more likely to initiate PIEDs use at a younger age, use PIEDs in a larger number of cycles per year and report involvement in a violent/aggressive incident than 'low risk' injectors and report involvement in a violent/aggressive incident than 'low risk' injectors. Participants mainly reported seeking information about PIEDs from internet sites (62%) and friends (55%).
An over-reliance on personal networks and internet forums limits this groups' access to objective harm reduction advice and primary care services. Targeted, PIEDs-specific interventions are needed.
Widespread illicit anabolic steroid use has recently been reported. A review of available evidence suggests that elevations of serum levels of steroid hormones, including anabolic steroids, have profound psychological effects. Long-term, high-dose anabolic steroid use may lead to a preoccupation with drug use, difficulty stopping despite psychological side effects, and drug craving. Reductions in serum levels of steroid hormones appear to result in acute hyperadrenergic withdrawal symptoms that respond to steroid replacement or to agents that also ameliorate withdrawal symptoms in alcohol and opioid dependence. A delayed depression syndrome when serum steroid levels drop precipitously has been reported that appears similar to that observed in withdrawing cocaine-dependent individuals. We conclude that a proportion of anabolic steroid abusers may develop a previously unrecognized sex steroid hormone-dependence disorder and that treatment should be based on research into steroid effects on opioid and aminergic neurotransmission systems and relapse prevention.
Serum erythropoietin (Epo) activity, hemoglobin (Hb), and hematocrit (Ht) were determined in 21 cross-country skiers during the training season. The Epo levels were not significantly reduced in the skiers relative to the normal population (P<0.01 and P<0.001, respectively).
In 11 athletes Epo, Ht, urinary γ-glutamyltransferase, N-acetyl-β-glucosaminidase, and microalbuminuria were determined before and after a 50-km ski race at 1600 m above sea level. A significant increase of these variables (except for Ht) was found after the competition (P<0.001).
It is concluded that while the reductions in Hb and Ht, which are typical of several endurance exercises, are not accompanied by a renal hypoxia sufficient to stimulate Epo overproduction, the renal hypoxia reached during the strenuous exercise of the race at altitude may be effective in determining blood increases in Epo.
In a previous study, we tested the hypothesis that because adolescent anabolic steroid users are concerned with increasing muscle size and strength they are different from other substance users and are unlikely to use other drugs. Alternatively, if the causal factors of anabolic steroid use are similar to those for use of other substances, then adolescent anabolic steroid users would be expected to report poly drug use. Study findings confirmed the second hypothesis.
To test the stability of the relationships between anabolic steroid use and poly drug use over a four month period among ninth grade students.
All ninth grade students (1422) enrolled in compulsory health science classes in a country school system who had previously completed a modified version of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 1989 Health Risk Survey and the 1990 Youth Risk Behavior Survey in November 1990 were asked to repeat the survey in February 1991.
A higher percentage of males (4.7 percent) than females (2.9 percent, P < or = 0.018) reported anabolic steroid use without a doctor's prescription. As was found in the initial study, frequency of anabolic steroid use was significantly (P < 0.001) associated with frequency of use in the last 30 days of cocaine, injectable drugs, alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, and smokeless tobacco. When those variables were analyzed with multiple regression analysis, the same four variables continued to be the best predictors of the frequency of anabolic steroid use, although the order that the variables entered into the multiple regression model changed. Use of smokeless tobacco, shared needles, cocaine, and marijuana explained more variation in the frequency of anabolic steroid use in the replication study (48.5%) than initially (32.8%).
These findings support the hypothesis that adolescent anabolic steroid users are also likely to use other drugs and are engaging in shared needle use. These relationships remained relatively stable over a four month period of time.
Editor—We have recently been involved in the care of a 21 year old amateur bodybuilder, who was admitted after taking an excessive amount of insulin intravenously. He developed severe brain damage after prolonged neuroglycopenia. His case brought several points to our attention. Since anabolic steroids have been designated illegal in competitive sport, athletes have been looking for alternative drugs to help them put on muscle mass and burn off fat. With …
A growing number of reports of anabolic-androgenic streroid (AS) use in Great Britain (GB) among non-competitive groups have emerged since the beginning of 1990s. A study was commissioned by the Departments of Health for England, Scotland and Wales, to explore the extent and uses of AS from the public health point of view. As a part of a wider investigation into AS use, 21 gymnasia in England, Scotland and Wales were surveyed by questionnaire. The response rate was 59%. We found that of the 1667 participants, 9.1% of the men and 2.3% of the women had taken AS at some time and 6% of the men and 1.4% of the women were current users. Considerable variation in the prevalence of use was found, ranging from no reports in three of the gymnasia, up to 46%. We also investigated patterns of AS use and perceived side-effects in a wide-ranging group of AS users (n = 110), who were recruited through social networks. In-depth interviews with the users revealed that the 97 men (27+/-7 years) and 13 women (25+/-5 years) had been using AS regularly for 2.05+/-1.7 years and 1.9+/-2 years, respectively. Seventy-two injected AS. While most injected themselves, 25% were mainly injected by their friend. Up to 16 different drugs were taken by interviewees during the present or last cycle. Polydrug use was common and dosage taken exceeded therapeutic recommendations. Sixteen interviewees did not report side-effects, while the majority reported two or more. Many of these were cosmetic. Of the 97 men interviewed, 56% reported testicular atrophy, 52% gynaecomastia, 36% elevated blood pressure, 56% fluid retention, 26% injuries to tendons, 22% nosebleeds and 16% more frequent colds. Six men reported problems with kidney function and five with liver function. Problems with sleep were reported by 37%. Of the 13 women interviewed, eight reported menstrual irregularities, eight fluid retention, four clitoral enlargement, three decreased breast size and two elevated blood pressure. Four reported sleeplessness.
Eight medicolegally examined cases of suicide, in 21- to 33-year-old males, with a history of current or discontinued use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) are described, five of which were approached by means of systematic interviews with survivors. Five suicides were committed during current use of AAS, and two following 2 and 6 months of AAS withdrawal. In one case it was unclear whether the suicide was committed during current use or after recent discontinuation. In five cases family members had noted depressive symptoms associated with AAS withdrawal. After prolonged use, four persons had developed depressive syndromes. Two subjects exhibited hypomania-like symptoms during the time immediately preceding the suicide. Four subjects had recently committed acts of violence while using AAS. In some cases these acts exacerbated the subjects' problems in personal relationships or at work, which in turn seem to have precipitated the suicides. Only one of them had experienced suicidal ideation before starting to use AAS. In all cases examined by psychological autopsy, risk factors of suicidality likely to be independent of the use of AAS were present. In conclusion, this study presents data suggesting that psychiatric symptoms and conflicts resulting from long-term use of AAS may contribute to completed suicide in certain predisposed individuals.
To examine, by HIV status, the use of anabolic steroids among London gay men and their effect on physical and mental health.
Cross-sectional survey using self-administered questionnaire.
Six gyms in central London.
772 gay men using the gyms in January-February 2000.
Proportion of gay men who reported (i) using steroids, (ii) sharing injecting equipment, (iii) experiencing side-effects and (iv) having suicidal thoughts or feeling depressed.
Of 772 gay men, 117 (15.2%) had used and 90 (11.7%) had injected steroids in the previous 12 months: HIV positive men (steroid use) 31.7% (40/126), HIV negative men 14.5% (69/477), never-tested for HIV 4.7% (8/169) (p < 0.001). No one reported sharing needles or syringes. HIV positive men were more likely to have used steroids for medical reasons than other men (24.3% versus 5.9%, p=0.01). Nearly all steroid users (96.4%) reported side effects including testicular atrophy (51.0%), insomnia (47.7%), depression between cycles (25.2%) and hypertension (19.0%). Steroid users were more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in the previous 6 months than non-users (22.6% versus 11.2%, adjusted odds ratio after controlling for HIV status 1.84; 95% CI 1.10-3.12, p=0.02) or to have felt depressed (49.1% versus 38.5%, adjusted OR 1.52, 95% CI 1.01-2.30, p=0.047)
One in seven gay men surveyed in central London gyms in 2000 said they had used steroids in the previous 12 months. HIV positive men were more likely to have used steroids than other men, some therapeutically. Side effects were reported widely and steroid use was associated with having had suicidal thoughts and feeling depressed, although cause and effect could not be established. Our findings suggest that steroid use among gay men may have serious consequences for both physical and mental health.
To scrutinize the criminal career among users of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) with focus on a possible relationship between use of AAS and violent offences.
Prospective longitudinal follow-up of police records concerning known users of AAS.
The present study describes five young men who started to use AAS with the primary motive of gaining muscle mass and strength and who subsequently got involved in criminal activities, including violent offences. One person showed deviant behaviour suggestive of conduct disorder at an early age. The other persons appeared to have low self-confidence, but had not been acting out during early adolescence.
Use of AAS may constitute an increased risk of developing an antisocial life style with involvement in criminal violence.
Anabolic ergogenic substance use, in particular the use of anabolic androgenic steroids, is a serious problem in general. Nevertheless, it is subject to debate whether ergogenic substance users exhibit similar features as multiple substance users or whether they constitute a discrete group.
One thousand eight hundred and two standardized, anonymous questionnaires were distributed among visitors of 113 fitness centers. Questions were asked concerning biometric parameters, social indicators, physical fitness, use of natural stimulants, general illicit drugs and ergogenic substances. With logistic regression analysis, multivariate odds ratios were estimated to investigate the association of anabolic ergogenic substance or general illicit drug use with other parameters.
13.5% of all participants confessed to having used anabolic ergogenic substances at some point in time. Anabolic ergogenic substance use was positively related with cocaine use, training years, training frequency, negatively related to the level of education, alcohol intake and less frequently used by Germans than by non-Germans. General illicit drug use, however, was positively related with alcohol intake, smoking and a university degree and negatively with having children. In addition, anabolic ergogenic substance use was significantly related with the use of general illicit drugs based on the strong relation with the use of cocaine, which is an ergogenic substance itself. The health care system supplies 48.1% of the anaolic ergogenic substance users with their substances and 32.1% are even monitored by a physician.
The results of this study strengthen the notion that anabolic ergogenic substance users constitute a specific body-oriented substance user group. Uncommon for general illicit drug use, the health care system is a major sponsor of anabolic ergogenic substance users. These findings suggest the need for alternative approaches for successful prevention and intervention programs.
Steroids are used outside the realm of competitive athletics in Australia among a wide variety of groups with different motivations and goals. This paper provides an overview of the reasons for use; rates of usage; physical and psychological side effects; and sources of steroids. Issues associated with injecting steroids; their current legal status; and drug education and prevention programmes are reviewed briefly. Research involving identified sub-populations is needed to determine user profiles and prevalence rates of users and potential users. Studies of Australian users are also needed to obtain baseline information on areas of potential harm associated with steroids use, e.g. aggressive behaviour, needle-sharing behaviour, physical side effects and potential for dependency. It is concluded that future deterrence strategies should focus more on demand reduction, rather than supply.
The use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) to increase muscle size and strength is widespread. Information regarding self-administered AAS used nonmedically to enhance athletic performance or improve physical appearance is sparse and poorly documented. The purpose of this study is to identify current trends in the drug-taking habits of AAS users.
An anonymous self-administered questionnaire was posted on the message boards of Internet Web sites popular among AAS users.
Of the 500 AAS users who participated in the survey, 78.4% (392/500) were noncompetitive bodybuilders and nonathletes; 59.6% (298/500) of the respondents reported using at least 1000 mg of testosterone or its equivalent per week. The majority (99.2%) of AAS users (496/500) self-administer injectable AAS formulations, and up to 13% (65/500) report unsafe injection practices such as reusing needles, sharing needles, and sharing multidose vials. In addition to using AAS, 25% of users admitted to the adjuvant use of growth hormone and insulin for anabolic effect, and 99.2% (496/500) of users reported subjective side effects from AAS use.
This survey reveals several trends in the nonmedical use of AAS. Nearly four out of five AAS users are nonathletes who take these drugs for cosmetic reasons. AAS users in this sample are taking larger doses than previously recorded, with more than half of the respondents using a weekly AAS dose in excess of 1000 mg. The majority of steroid users self-administer AAS by intramuscular injection, and approximately 1 in 10 users report hazardous injection techniques. Polypharmacy is practiced by more than 95% of AAS users, with one in four users taking growth hormone and insulin. Nearly 100% of AAS users reported subjective side effects.