Take performance-enhancing drugs in Germany and you could go to jail for up to three years under a new law set to come into effect next year.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière presented a draft of the law — simply titled the Anti-Doping Act — at a recent press conference in Berlin where he said: "The aim of the law is to preserve the integrity of sport and to combat doping."
Athletes who fail both A and B tests for doping substances would be liable to prosecution under the new law, and possession of any quantity of doping substance would also be punishable.
Herr de Maizière told German news channel N24 that he was planning a "wide-reaching law of a type that does not exist internationally".
In particular, the law is aimed at ensuring state-funded athletes are clean.
"If we support elite sport with tax with tax-payers' money then the taxpayer has a right to demand that it happens fairly," he told N24.
Athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs are perpetrators, not victims, the minister said. Those who intentionally use doping agents are the main beneficiaries, since they derive financial benefit from their fraud. The new law will not go after organised doping such as existed at Lance Armstrong's US Postal and Discovery Channel teams, though.
"We may yet punish those behind the scenes," said Herr de Maizière. "We have to now have an offense with which to punish the elite athletes themselves who are the beneficiaries."
At the press conference announcing the draft law, Herr de Maizière and Justice Minister Heiko Maas said one group of doping enablers will be targeted by the new law: doctors who supply doping products will be liable for prison terms of up to 10 years if they put "the health of a large number of people at risk".
Herr Maas said the law was a milestone in the fight against doping, and the move was welcomed by anti-doping authorities.
"This is a clear step in the right direction. It is a clear sign of clean sport," said the chairman of the National Anti-Doping Agency, Andrea Gotzmann.
The president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Craig Reedie, said: "This law is going in the right direction. I can see no reason why sporting courts and national laws cannot coexist."
10 thoughts on “Three years in jail for doping under new German law to take effect next year”
This is an interesting idea,
This is an interesting idea, but many people have claimed, with varying degrees of success that the tests sometimes produce false positives. It is also possible to ‘spike’ someones drink bottle, gel or other food stuff. For this reason I think I would want to have more evidence than a positive sample to put someone in prison? A step in the right direction but the idea needs to be thought through.
Lock em up first, deal with
Lock em up first, deal with appeals after, glad someone has grasped the nettle.
I’m not sure how effective
I’m not sure how effective criminalisation is in trying to stop doping. In the bad old days lots of pro-cyclists would live just over the French/Spanish border in Girona, as back then unlike France the use of WADC prohibited substances wasn’t a crime in Spain, and the legal climate in Spain has always been more favorable for dopers. The mess of the Dr Fuentes case/Operación Puerto is a great example. I believe Spain has since changed its stance, but these kind of laws just encourage forum shopping.
Does anyone really think this will deter someone who is prepared to cheat in the first place?
Whoops. double post editing
Whoops. double post editing fail 8|
As they say on the streets of
As they say on the streets of London
‘Shit just got real!’
Ridiculous. How many years
Ridiculous. How many years for tampering with a cricket ball, taking a dive in football, riding a bike < 6.8kg etc. Sport should be left to self regulate; the law is for real life.
I’m unclear as to what they
I’m unclear as to what they meant by ‘the new law will not go after organised doping such as existed at at US postal’ etc.
Does it mean they won’t be going after retrospective cases of doping, or that it will only be the athletes not the team managers etc?
If more countries adopted this stance it would maybe be more of a deterrent, in the bad old days the excuse of ‘everyone’s doing it, I have to to keep up’ might have excused some people, but if cycling’s as clean as most are claiming, then it shouldn’t be a problem, at least in prison they’re unlikely to be able to train for a comeback once their backdated ban runs out after a few months of the start of the season.
RobD wrote:I’m unclear as to
Well yeah it definitely won’t apply retrospectively (the ECHR would pull them up if they tried that), but they simply mean that the law is specifically aimed at athletes who benefit from state funding.
Which of course means that there’s a huge loophole here that will allow doping to continue. Trainers can organise doping without the athlete’s knowledge – and both are off the hook.
Unless they’ll make it akin to strict liability.
This will make them think
This will make them think twice.
If doping was as black and
If doping was as black and white as steroids or illegal compounds it would make sense, but consider that in many sports, especially athletics you can fail a test for taking something as simple as an over the counter cold remedy. How can you jail someone for taking a perfectly legal substance which is available to anyone?