WADA To Shorten Punishments For Recreational Drug Offenses

[Ruthless-RKO]

WADA To Shorten Punishments For Recreational Drug Offenses

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is making some changes, where they won't issue long suspensions for athletes testing positive for recreational drugs out of competition.

Instead of being banned for two years, the athletes will now be banned for one to three months, according to Reuters.

The policy change, for reduced sanctions, will come into effect from January 1 of next year, with a stronger focus on catching athletes who use performance enhancing drugs.

The WADA rule change will see athletes serving suspensions have their punishments reduced to three months. If they agree to complete a rehab treatment program, the suspension will be reduced to one month.

"If the athlete can establish that any ingestion or use occurred out of competition and was unrelated to sport performance, then the period of ineligibility shall be three months," WADA's new code says.

"In addition, the period of ineligibility calculated... may be reduced to one month if the athlete or other person satisfactorily completes a substance of abuse treatment program approved by the Anti-Doping Organisation."

WADA approved a revision of the World Anti-Doping Code in November 2019 after a two-year consultation process.

There will also be an introduction to a new Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV), to ensure whistleblowers who share information on doping in sport are protected. WADA states that discouraging an individual to come forward or retaliation will count as an offense.

Additionally, use of multiple prohibited substances can add an additional two years to a ban. And falsifying documents will count as a separate offence.

[Ruthless-RKO]

This may help fights being made quicker?
I don’t know.

What does everyone think?

Good news? Bad? Same difference.

[Enlightened-One]

The fact that WADA has decided to shorten suspensions for athletes testing positive for recreational drugs out of competition is a step in the right direction, but they need to go one step further.

WADA needs to focus on enforcing sporting values, by addressing legitimate doping cheats that actively seek to gain an unfair advantage over their rivals, rather than policing the lifestyles of athletes.

They shouldn’t be wasting valuable time, expense and resource testing for recreational drugs that neither adversely affect the health of athletes (to any significant degree), nor harming the “image” and “spirit” of the sport.

Many anti-doping regulations and controls were introduced to sport in the 1960s and developed to address specific concerns that were raised at the time, but they’re out-of-date and times have changed.

For instance: it’s difficult for WADA to justify banning marijuana because it has been recently legalised in various territories around the globe. And research suggests that 76% of individuals would be open to consuming it, which means that public perception of this drug has obviously changed since the 1960s.

In my mind, it would be a severe misallocation of resources on WADA’s part testing for marijuana (or other similarly [moderately] harmless recreational drugs). It’s an unnecessary burden, and scarce resources need to focus on detecting drugs which are performance-enhancing.

[H8Usernames]

Doping has deep roots in boxing, basketball, football, wrestling, baseball and many other sporta. The wada should be banned.