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WADA chief says drugs cheats shouldn't go to jail

Sir Craig Reedie says dopers should face sporting sanctions, not criminal ones

Sir Craig Reedie, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), says athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs should be sanctioned under anti-doping rules established by sporting bodies and not through the criminal law.

Reedie was commenting on a draft law in Germany, expected to be approved in April, that would see athletes found using or in possession of doping products face a jail term of up to three years, reports the Associated Press.

Speaking at a meeting of WADA’s foundation board in Paris at the weekend, he said: "An athlete should be sanctioned under the sports rules which have been developed over many years, and he should not be sanctioned under criminal law.

"People who say: `If you cheat, you will be put in jail,' that is not something with which we are comfortable," Reedie said. "We do not believe that that should happen."

While a number of countries have criminalised the trafficking of doping products and also use existing legislation regarding fraud against drugs cheats, as this article from the Australian parliament outlines, some have gone even further and implemented specific laws.

Those include Austria, which has a law specifically addressing fraud in a sporting context, Italy, which created three separate crimes relating to doping under a law enacted in 2000, France and Spain.

Cases related to cycling brought under criminal law include that of Stefan Matschiner, the former agent of Bernard Kohl and Michael Rasmussen, both of whom received doping bans. 

Matschiner was convicted in 2010 by an Austrian court of helping riders undertake blood doping, and of selling prohibited substances to them and was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment.

Reedie, who from 1992 to 2005 was chairman of the British Olympic Association, also confirmed an increase of 3 per cent in WADA’s funding ahead of the implementation, from 1 January, of the updated World Anti-Doping Code.

Under the new rules, athletes guilty of a first-time doping offence will see their bans increased to four years instead of the current two years.

With a little over a year and a half to go until the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he also said that WADA was “working closely” with Brazil’s national anti-doping agency to ensure that the city’s anti-doping laboratory was re-accredited ahead of the event.

WADA withdrew accreditation last year since the facility did not meet its quality standards. At this year’s FIFA World Cup, held in Brazil, samples were sent to Switzerland for analysis.

"It is important that we have the laboratory in Rio re-accredited so that it doesn't make any mistakes," Reedie explained.

"It made some mistakes, which is why it lost its accreditation. But nothing would be worse for athletes than to take part in the competition when they knew there was any question of wrong results from a laboratory that we used to test the samples."

The agency also revealed that individual countries including France, Japan and Russia had joined others such as China and the United States in contributing towards a new anti-doping research fund that will seek to develop new ways of detecting banned substances and methods.

Money pledged for the project now stands at around $10 million, with match funding from the International Olympic Committee taking the total to $20 million.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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9 comments

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TimC340 | 9 years ago
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Drug use and fraud are different things, and different laws and statutes apply. Whether or not a drug user can be prosecuted for using drugs, they can be prosecuted for fraud - which will often carry a far higher tariff of punishment. As for @manmachine above, mate, this is a cycling site not a forum for the overthrow of capitalism. Take it somewhere else.

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ch | 9 years ago
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Glad to hear about funding for research into detection methods. Despite the Armstrong downfall, well timed micro-dosing of EPO is no more detectable than it ever was. And now everyone knows it can work. In fact, in intense training and stage races, if micro-dosing of EPO is skillfully used to keep hemocrit levels constant rather than having them fall as they naturally would, an athlete is less likely to attract attention for having unstable hemocrit levels.

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123qwe | 9 years ago
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A Sportsman[?] who takes drugs is not a Sportsman.

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Simmo72 | 9 years ago
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Wada should stick to sport and let the legal system handle their own laws. At the end of the day, it is fraud, often heading into millions of £ so they should be punished. But then we see a load of bankers fixing exchange rates and other bad behavior and they get nothing. meanwhile some starving, homeless chap nicks £5 worth of stock from a shop and gets put away for 3 months.

F o o k e d up system

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Pointbroken | 9 years ago
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In two minds about this.

It seems excessive for athletes but then if your a government funded athlete caught doping you have been figuritively stealing money from other athletes pockets. I knew an amateur athlete that was still working full time who made a national rowing squad after years of trying and it was a life changing expierence. Imagine being that person and finding out the people in front of you getting your opportunity where doing it illegally

I totally get why doctors who run doping programmes would get jailed.

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manmachine | 9 years ago
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Governments, Governing Bodies and the Gestapo (Police) should worry more about the pressing issues of massive economic depression throughout the FAILED EU and the corrupted U.S.

The Trans Global Tyranny and the Fourth Reich sticking their noses where it doesn't belong. Politicizing ped use for propaganda. While infrastructure crumble. While Pensioners are being fleeced by Global Banksters. The western world deserves to be attacked by China-Russia Alliance. Maybe then priorities would take precedent.

The 'useless as an ashtray on a motorbike' governments of the West are Corrupted Criminal pieces of shit who should be jailed or hanged.

Jailed for ped use indeed...get fooked

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manmachine | 9 years ago
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FINALLY, someone with some common F'ing sense at wada. Still a bunch of wankers though. But the idea of locking people up for ped use is insane. All the Fifth Reich and haus-frau merkel are trying to do is expand on the industrialized prison system and make billions, as the Fourth reich does in the US. Scumbags, elites, POS Oligarchs.

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cat1commuter | 9 years ago
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Article would be more interesting if he said why criminalising doping is a bad idea. I believe the argument is that it may not help reduce the amount of doping that goes on. The standard of proof required may be higher, so fewer dopers are convicted. People involved in doping may be less likely to talk to WADA and national anti-doping bodies, and when they do the bodies themselves may be in an awkward position where information given to them in confidence is now evidence of criminal activity which should be shared with police.

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DrJDog | 9 years ago
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It is fraud. People go to jail for less. Why not this?

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