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On February 17th, I attended an international sports law symposium hosted by the Michigan Sports Law Society. For one of the topics, Howard Jacobs, one of the leading athlete’s lawyers in the United States, and William Bock III, who has served as General Council to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) since 2007, discussed their perspectives on drug testing in athletics. Both agreed that doping in order to increase athletic performance should be considered cheating, but they disagreed over the ways in which USADA handles drug testing and prosecution of those athletes who test positive.
Mr. Bock opened by discussing the difficulty of actually catching dopers. He used as an example a blog that tells dopers how to avoid testing positive. He also showed how athletes could use extremely complex and exact routines that involve ingesting huge amounts of chemicals to avoid detection. However, these detection avoidance routines involve a lot of money too. As a consequence, the athletes that actually get caught doping are usually just the ones who can’t afford the extensive lab work and expensive physicians that these complex routines require. Another consequence is that just because an athlete never tested positive for steroids doesn’t mean he or she never used them.
Mr. Jacobs argued that current testing results in too many false positives. He believes that substances other than steroids or accidental consumption cause the majority of positives in drug tests, citing problems such as the notoriously bad quality control in the supplement industry and the general athlete attitude, ‘I’m not taking illicit substances, so I don’t have to worry.’ USADA spends too much money prosecuting these false positives when it should be spending its money developing more accurate drug tests.
If an athlete tests positive, the burden then lies with the athlete to prove their innocence. Then, even if the athlete shows that the positive was caused by, for example, accidental consumption of a substance through a contaminated supplement, he or she is still penalized, though less so than an intentional doper. Does this seem right? Mr. Bock argued that some of these excuses are ‘dog ate the homework’ excuses. Also, even if an athlete accidentally consumed a substance they still might be receiving its illicit benefits. Is USADA going about its drug testing and prosecution the right way?
Mr. Bock opened by discussing the difficulty of actually catching dopers. He used as an example a blog that tells dopers how to avoid testing positive. He also showed how athletes could use extremely complex and exact routines that involve ingesting huge amounts of chemicals to avoid detection. However, these detection avoidance routines involve a lot of money too. As a consequence, the athletes that actually get caught doping are usually just the ones who can’t afford the extensive lab work and expensive physicians that these complex routines require. Another consequence is that just because an athlete never tested positive for steroids doesn’t mean he or she never used them.
Mr. Jacobs argued that current testing results in too many false positives. He believes that substances other than steroids or accidental consumption cause the majority of positives in drug tests, citing problems such as the notoriously bad quality control in the supplement industry and the general athlete attitude, ‘I’m not taking illicit substances, so I don’t have to worry.’ USADA spends too much money prosecuting these false positives when it should be spending its money developing more accurate drug tests.
If an athlete tests positive, the burden then lies with the athlete to prove their innocence. Then, even if the athlete shows that the positive was caused by, for example, accidental consumption of a substance through a contaminated supplement, he or she is still penalized, though less so than an intentional doper. Does this seem right? Mr. Bock argued that some of these excuses are ‘dog ate the homework’ excuses. Also, even if an athlete accidentally consumed a substance they still might be receiving its illicit benefits. Is USADA going about its drug testing and prosecution the right way?
You raised some great points in this post. Drug testing is an incredibly iffy process by all accounts, and I can't think of a greater example than that of Ryan Braun. He was the National League MVP of the MLB but tested positive for illegal substances after the season was over. He was suspended, but recently got his suspension repealed. It is a classic case of bad drug testing, with countless people saying different things, miscommunication, and in all fairness, lots of lies. I would like to think Braun is innocent, but is his justification (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/baseball/mlb/02/23/braun.suspension.ap/index.html) one of Mr. Bock's "dog ate the homework" excuses? It remains to be seen.
ReplyDeleteI think you raise a very good question here. Sometimes athletes slip up and really do take something they do not know will show up positive on a drug test. It's just the matter of there really are athletes that take performance enhancing drugs so it makes it harder to believe the innocent ones. I honestly think that the "dog ate the homework excuse" should not be acceptable sometimes athletes do make a mistake, but really how often does that honestly happen?
ReplyDeleteI think that you raised an incredible point here. There have been numerous occasions in sports where athletes have "claimed" that they have taken the substance accidentally. In many of these cases, the athlete was still penalized, as they did consume the substance. Recently, Ryan Braun (NL MVP) tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. He fought his test, and ended up winning in court. This is a very rare occasion, but this shows that it can happen. On the other hand, how many times have athletes claimed they took it accidentally, when in reality we all know it was far from an accident. In reality, there is know correct way to go about drug testing athletes, and there will always be those athletes who use "the dog ate the homework excuse."
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