The Sports Ministry is planning to bring forward an
anti-doping law that may send offenders to jail. It is a welcome move.
But before we jump to conclusions let’s clear a few
things first.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) does not want governments to criminalize doping in sports with the intention of sending athletes
to jail. It does want people who indulge in trafficking of prohibited substances,
coaches, doctors, other support staff, agents and suppliers, among others, to
be dealt with severely and punished with prison terms if possible.
WADA keeps reminding stakeholders that their duty is
to follow the Code and not let unduly harsh sanctions or prison terms replace what
had been agreed to by all parties concerned while redrafting the Code for 2015.
The Union Government is trying to bring a law to
criminalize doping in an effort to fall in line with the International
Convention against Doping in Sports passed by UNESCO in October, 2005. Many
countries have passed laws that either directly criminalize doping in sports or else are associated with penalizing the trafficking of banned substances in sports.
Several countries have laws
Those having some law or the other dealing with doping
in sports include Austria and Australia, both having introduced the laws in
2006, Germany which brought it in in 2016, France, Italy, Spain Denmark,
Hungary, Romania, Portugal, Sweden, Serbia, New Zealand and China. No country
has however sent an athlete to jail for a doping offence so far.
(May also refer to my article
in The Wire )
No matter that there is a growing concern about doping
in sports, especially in the wake of the stunning revelations about
state-abetted doping in Russia that almost kept that country out of the Rio
Olympic Games last year, not many countries want to send their athletes to
jail. Understandably so.
India should also weigh the pros and cons before we
decide to have any provision to punish the athlete with a jail term in the
proposed anti-doping law. Would it not be sufficient to penalize the athletes
with the sanctions prescribed in the Code? How long would proceedings last in a
criminal case in the event of an athlete being brought under this new law and
sentenced to say a one-year term in jail? Will the athlete remain suspended
even after serving, let’s say, a two-year ban? Or will he or she be prevented
from competitions since a case is going on? Should they be concentrating on the
criminal case in a court of law instead of training hard in their comeback bid?
These are questions that should exercise
the minds of the Sports Ministry and the law-makers if indeed there is any move
to send athletes to jail.
Hopefully, India would follow WADA’s wishes rather
than opt for a harsher penalty to provide a greater deterrence to potential
dopers. If it is to follow the example of Australia which does have a provision
to penalize a dope offender with a prison term (it has never used it so far or
at least there is no information regarding this), since it has got an ongoing
collaboration with the ASADA, then it would be better off to concentrate on
trafficking rather than doping per se.
Coaches escape sanctions
The fact that the NADA has not managed to bring
forward a single offender from among coaches, doctors, physiotherapists,
masseurs and other support staff, may however prove a dampener when it comes to
chasing drug-traffickers.
One has to hope that the law-enforcement agencies
would be more diligent in keeping a watch on drug-traffickers in the sports
arena.
To be fair to NADA, it never had an investigation
department or officer since inception in 2009. Less than a dozen people work in
NADA and so far, they have handled 715 doping cases (latest figures available
on the NADA website) which in itself is highly creditable.
A couple of coaches or other support staff with
athletes in training camps or doctors who apparently prescribed steroids for
some ache or the other could have been pursued through appropriate authorities
to get to the truth and, if necessary, charges brought against them. That did
not happen.
NADA has to utilize existing provisions in the Code to
sanction support staff of athletes rather than hide behind the plea that there
is nothing in the rules that it can fall back on to punish coaches, doctors and
others. Existing rules can ban support personnel for life if trafficking or other serious charges are proved.
In September 2015 WADA brought out a list of suspended
support personnel around the world. The initial list of 113 contained 61
Italians, 15 of them life-banned. The list has since been expanded to 151.
There is no Indian there! Is it a record to be proud of or does it show the
total lack of interest shown by NADA to pursue coaches, doctors and other
support personnel who might have had a role to play in the doping programme of
the Indian sportspersons?
MHA tablet!
In one case in 2012, NADA did not even try to
establish that there could be no “MHA tablet”, claimed to have been prescribed
by a doctor to an athlete, since there never was a tablet for that substance (methylhexaneamine) manufactured by any company in the world!
Then there were cases where athletes alleged they were
being supplied with banned drugs by the coaches. Occasionally news also
trickled in of drugs being confiscated inside training centres or being
impounded by Customs authorities. Or for that matter a ‘dope chart’ or two doing
the rounds at the NIS, Patiala during pre-NADA days.
No follow-up action was ever taken to probe such
incidents either by the NADA or the ministry.
With the possible advent of laws to prevent at least
trafficking in banned substances one can hope that agencies would vigorously
pursue to plug the loopholes.
But will they?
For years we have heard of banned drugs, mainly
steroids, being easily available at chemists shops near the NIS, Patiala, the
main hub of training camps for elite athletes. Occasionally when doping makes
headlines such shops are raided, some are closed and some others brought under
stricter control.
Nothing lasts for long, though, in India. They get
back into business before long.
WADA-banned drugs are not the only problem in India as
is the case in most countries. The proposed legislation is expected to tackle
spurious dietary supplements, too. This will be a bigger problem than keeping
tabs on dope-giving coaches.
FSSAI regulations
India does not have proper regulations to monitor the
manufacture and sale of dietary supplements. Many of the countries do not have.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) issued a set of rules only last year to regulate the manufacture, supply and marketing of
supplements, nutraceuticals and such other items. The rules will come into
force in January 2018. Will they be superceded by the proposed anti-doping law?
It will be interesting to see how the Sports ministry,
NADA, health organizations and the police regulate the sale of supplements on
the internet. The majority of the supplements popular among Indian athletes (going
by the references made in anti-doping rule violation cases before disciplinary
panels and the grapevine) are manufactured abroad. Either they come into Indian
market through agents or else athletes purchase them on the internet where a variety of options are available. This is
not to suggest that all such supplements could be contaminated by banned
substances. But studies in the past have shown that athletes run great risk in
consuming nutritional supplements not manufactured by reputed firms.
While NADA’s concern about unscrupulous manufacturers
and suppliers mixing banned substances in supplements is genuine (this is a
world-wide phenomenon) it has to be noted that it is one of the few national
anti-doping organisations (NADOs) in the world that has not bothered to keep
athletes updated about the danger of using supplements through its website.
How to do it
There is of course mention about “awareness” in the
pages dealing with anti-doping education of athletes on the website but nothing that may guide
the athletes towards actual use.
Check out the UKAD website to see how an anti-doping
agency can make a difference as far as educating an athlete is concerned.
Even as the government brings in laws to tackle the
supplements industry and suppliers_if they could be effectively tackled_NADA
has the primary responsibility of educating the athletes about the danger of
supplements use. Many hearing panels have urged NADA to step up its awareness
programme. This journalist has on more than one occasion pointed out the
possible use of the website to contribute towards this.
From mid-2012 till now the website has remained what it
has been: nothing in particular for the athletes bar some rules and
regulations. And not much for the media barring an updated list of suspended
athletes. The website has undergone an overhaul since 2012 though without much
improvement in contents. Some of the sections have not been updated since
September, 2016.
NADA should not sit back and relax thinking that
lawmakers would take care of some of the crucial aspects of anti-doping if
indeed laws are going to be framed in the near future. While the deterrence
value of anti-doping laws cannot be discounted NADA has to concentrate on its
primary goals: make life that much easier for the ‘’clean athletes” by coming
down hard on the cheats.
Till the time it has an efficient “intelligence
gathering” machinery NADA should continue to test more athletes at senior and
junior national levels while not ignoring departmental meets and schools and university
championships. And as I have stressed through the past few months, NADA has to
hold refresher courses for panel members to familiarize them with the rules and interpretations through CAS and other decisions around the world.
Sooner the NADA gets an investigation department or investigator
the better it would be for anti-doping in this country. Criminal investigation
may take years to come to fruition; NADA cannot afford to wait that long to
choke the supply system of steroids and growth hormones and stuff like that. It
can lay part of the blame on the doors of the health authorities in the
country, both at the Centre and the States, in their failure to prevent the supply of
steroids to athletes but that alone would not wash.
