Anti-Doping Laws

August 12, 2009

Anti doping laws and their enforcement vary widely in different countries and between different sports within the same countries. That is why, a conference of the United Nations body, UNESCO, voted to create an international convention against doping. It’s aim is to harmonize anti-doping laws around the world. For as long as there have been competitive sports, athletes have taken performance enhancing substances ,going back to the stimulating portions taken by ancient Greek sportsmen. In the 19th century, cyclists and other endurance athletes kept themselves going with caffeine, alcohol and even cocaine etc. In 1928, the precursor of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) , became the first world sporting body to forbid stimulants. But the ban was ineffective because there was no way of testing for many of the stimulants. The invention of artificial hormones in the 1930s made the problem more severe. In the 1960s, the world bodies for cycling and soccer became the first to introduce doping tests. However there was no reliable test for steroids until the 1970s. Once it was introduced, there was a big rise in the number of athletes being disqualified. See more about the side effects of these steroids in the next post.