In recent years, professional athletes have been subject to testing for illicit substances, though the rationale for doing so is unique to sport. Organisations like the Australian Institute of Sport, the Australian Rugby Union, the National Rugby League and the Australian Football League pay for testing independent of WADA, and with broadly similar aims:
Risk management: athletes who use narcotics out of competition are at risk of a four-year WADA ban should such substances be detected in competition.
Brand management: negative publicity associated with players using illicit substances compromises the reputation of a club and a sport.
Player management: possession of illicit drugs is against the law; use (or supply) can therefore be treated as a crime.
Health management: there are health risks associated with the use of narcotics; sports that test for these substances argue that they have a holistic duty of care to ensure the well-being of their athlete employees.
Rehabilitation management: if athletes test positive to narcotics out of competition they are treated under a medical model that emphasises behavioural change under the supervision of addiction experts. Each sport has a number of confidential “strikes”, allowing players some opportunity to alter their conduct. If not, they are suspended. Ultimately they can be dismissed.
These interventions have been driven by individual sports, not WADA, which only tests for narcotics in competition where it regards them as performance-enhancing substances. Although WADA requires out-of-competition testing of athletes, the list of drugs it seeks to detect are the classical “performance boosters”, such as steroids, EPO and blood doping.
From this perspective, narcotics have no cumulative value out of competition in terms of performance-enhancing attributes. However, while WADA has no policy interest in the use of illicit drugs by athletes out of competition, it will prosecute any sportsperson it deems to have supplied a narcotic as an anti-doping violation. This is intriguing to say the least.
