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Synthesis of Findings and Lessons for Policy-Making

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The Sports Doping Market

Abstract

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).

In the first part, we present the main findings of the study, by organizing them into eight topics: doping products and their harms; our estimates of the numbers of users and the size of the market; the suppliers’ main characteristics and types; the distribution chains and market relationships; the role played by organized sports world and organized crime in the supply of doping products; our estimates of the revenues of the overall market for doping products as well as the revenues and profits of the suppliers; the legislation and the institutional actors underpinning Italy’s anti-doping policy; and the latter’s outcomes and related challenges.

In the second part, we consider the extent to which our findings on Italy can be generalized to other countries by comparing them with the international literature on doping. Drawing on the findings of the present study, the international literature as well as the research on illegal drug policy and crime control, we also propose lessons for the world’s anti-doping policy-making. Our main conclusion is that criminal law enforcement has an unexploited, crucial (though limited), potential role in anti-doping. Therefore, we recommend that all countries should pass appropriate legislation on the basis of a standardized model so as to facilitate international police and judicial cooperation (and in the meanwhile exploit the equivalent offenses that already exist in most countries), provide their law enforcement agencies with the technical, institutional, and financial resources necessary to effectively investigate the problem of doping, foster the cooperation between these agencies and anti-doping organizations, and remain aware of the limits and harms of criminal law enforcement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the units of measure adopted in calculating the doping doses of the different substances, see Chap. 2.

  2. 2.

    Our estimate of the number of users of doping products is more than twice as large as the estimated number of heroin users emerging from the last population survey (98,000 people based on a 2010 past-year prevalence rate of 0.25 %; see Dipartimento Politiche Antidroga, 2011: 8).

  3. 3.

    The official Italian name is Commissione per la vigilanza ed il controllo sul doping e per la tutela della salute nelle attività sportive (Commission for the Vigilance and Control on Doping and the Protection of Health in Sports Activities), which is shortened in CVD.

  4. 4.

    Moreover, CVD’s data refer to positive results, whereas WADA (2011a: 1) merely reports “adverse analytical findings,” from which the cases of users with a Therapeutic Use Exemption need to be subtracted.

  5. 5.

    See also the 2012 comparative report “Strategy for Stopping Steroids” produced by the anti-doping agencies of five EU countries (Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Poland, and Cyprus) under the aegis of Anti Doping Denmark (2012: 78).

  6. 6.

    It must be stressed that the selection process is not random: test personnel chooses the fitness center visitors to be tested who are most likely to have used drugs. The proportion of positive cases is therefore not representative of the total number of centers visitors (Anti Doping et al. 2012: 56).

  7. 7.

    The earlier figures were stated by Holz, an Interpol officer specialized in anti-doping issues at a WADA Foundation Board Meeting in November 2010 (World Anti-Doping Agency 2010e).

  8. 8.

    While looking for the right mix of policy interventions, policy-makers tackling the problem of doping might draw useful lessons from the history of the international drug control regime. Whereas recent history forcefully demonstrates the difficulty of reducing the demand for illegal drugs through supply-side interventions, the policy and market developments in the 1920s and 1930s indicate that these interventions heavily impact the types and modus operandi of the suppliers, wiping out the least harmful and most deterrable suppliers and thus inadvertently provoking harm. In those two decades, in fact, the League of Nations was quite effective in using the power of adverse publicity and managed to convince all the large pharmaceutical companies to reduce diversion and cut heroin production drastically. Coupled with the criminal law restrictions enforced by national governments, the League’s successful interventions transformed the market. In the early 1920s, the illicit trade in narcotics depended to a large extent on diverting legally manufactured drugs. Underworld members were typically located at the bottom of the drug-manufacturing and marketing system. In combination with manufacturers and numerous middlemen and retail outlets, they diverted a portion of the product to non-medical consumers. By the beginning of World War II, however, professional criminals were almost alone at the beginning of the process, owning clandestine factories around the world and resorting to extensive violence and corruption to promote and defend their business (e.g., Meyer and Parssinen, 1998; Paoli et al. 2009).

  9. 9.

    Article 11, §2 merely establishes that “if more than two members of a team in a Team Sport are found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation during an Event Period, the ruling body of the Event shall impose an appropriate sanction on the team (e.g., loss of points, Disqualification from a Competition or Event, or other sanction) in addition to any Consequences imposed upon the individual Athletes committing the anti-doping rule violation.” Article 12 adds that “nothing in the Code precludes any Signatory or government accepting the Code from enforcing its own rules for the purpose of imposing sanctions on another sporting body over which the Signatory or government has authority.”

  10. 10.

    In 2012, for example, WADA (2013b) invoiced national governments US$13,201,048 but received only US$10,613,946, thus US$2,596,102 less than expected. As the IOC pays only matching funds, WADA thus faced an unexpected loss of over $5 million dollars corresponding to about 20 % of its budget.

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Paoli, L., Donati, A. (2014). Synthesis of Findings and Lessons for Policy-Making. In: The Sports Doping Market. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8241-3_8

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