ETHICAL ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH DRUG
USE IN SPORT
The use of drug use in sport is both unhealthy and contrary
to the ethics of sport..It is necessary to protect the physical
and spiritual health of athletes, the values of fair play and of
competition, the integrity and the unity of sport, and the rights
of those who take part in it at whatever level.
( IOC, 1990)
"Equal conditions for all", the most deceptively simple
definition of fair play to be found in the Oxford English
Dictionary. The fundamental idea of sport is considered to be
character building, teaching the virtues of dedication,
perseverance, endurance and self-discipline. Sport is
suppose to help us learn from defeat as much as from victory, and
team sports foster a spirit of co-operation, and interdependence,
importing something of moral and social values. It is also
integrating us as individuals, to bring about a healthy,
integrated society. This would mean that drug use has no
place in sport.
Equal conditions for all is the sports equivalent of the
general moral principle of equal justice for all. Equal
justice for all implies that the same justice applies to
everybody regardless of their class, race, origin, or gender with
no special privileges or advantages.
Not only is drug use clearly cheating and an ethical dilemma
for coaches, doctors and officials, but it also puts the health
of the athlete at great risk. It is believed that ethical
problems arise because of many reasons such as:
# The competitive character of the athlete;
# Coaching practices that emphasise winning as the only goal;
# Media pressure to win;
# Prevalent attitude that doping is necessary to win;
# Public expectations about national competitiveness;
# Huge financial rewards for winning;
# Unethical practices condoned by national and international
sports federations;
# Psychological belief in aids to performance (eg. The 'Magic
Pill").
There are many influences on drug use. There can be no
justification for athletes to cheat in order to win or that the
pressures and temptations are all the same for the
athletes. The problem of drug use in sport is not
educational, economic or a social problem, but a moral problem.
The sporting complex is seen to have been replaced by a
competition between doctors and biochemists on the ones side and
the regulating authorities on the other. The athlete
becomes the "puppet" of this technology, health risks
are then ignored, and other competitors cannot participate unless
they too are prepared to use chemical substances to improve their
performance. In this era, where genetic and chemical
manipulation is commonplace it is hardly surprising that many
athletes no longer rely on their natural skills and abilities.
The preservation of sport is necessary, to keep the nobility
and chivalry which have been distinguished in the past, so it may
continue to play the same part in the education of people of
today as it did in Ancient Greece. This may have been so at
the turn of the turn of the century, but in present day sport the
pressured on all concerned is immense. An athlete nowadays
is faced with meeting expectations of the coach, teammates,
family and friends. Coaches are also faced with similar
pressure, to produce the winning combination, coping with fitness
levels and making demands on individuals, all of which may give
the wrong signals in respect to drug misuse. Doctors also
face a dilemma when they prescribe drugs to athletes and
monitoring their effects as a safe way of containing drug misuse
rather than knowing an athlete will seek black-market sources and
advice.
There is also another perspective that constitutes drug
misuse. Some banned substances such testosterone, actually
originate in the body, and it is an excessive level in which has
been classified as a doping offence involving
testosterone/epitestosterone ratios illustrates that the debate
is also ongoing. Other substances, such as ephedrine and
caffeine, commonly occur in OTC medications, herbal preparations
and even in social. There is no doubt that athletes
are prepared to make use of these substances to assist in their
performance. In many sports, increasing commercialism has
seen a price put on an athlete's head; some cope better with this
than others.