An Exploratory Study On Effective Ways Of Combating Doping In Professional Sports

Academic Paper from the year 2022 in the subject Health - Sports science, grade: A, , language: English, abstract: What are the effective ways of addressing doping problem in professional sports? The prevalence of doping in professional sports is a societal and public health issue. As such, doping prevention should not be an exclusive responsibility of sporting organisations. Due to this, scholars joined the sporting community to enhance their understanding of why sportspeople dope, how they dope, and what should be done to prevent the trend. For instance, in a study to review the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, David Martin, David Baron, and Mark Gold found that doping is a dangerous trend that contradicts the spirit of sports, puts athletes' health at risk, and promotes unfair competition and undermines societal values such as honesty, integrity, hard work, and so on. They added that while doping practices have been around for several centuries, advancements in medical technology have increased access to drugs by athletes. Therefore, doping prevention measures should strive to minimise access to banned substances and prescribe sanctions that deter athletes and sporting stakeholders in their pursuit of performance-enhancing drugs. In this regard, this paper explores the criminalisation of doping alongside other anti-doping strategies in professional sports.