Paul Lewis: Punishment must ramp up a notch

Kiwi star Valerie Adams (left) has lost money thanks to cheats such as Belarusian shot put rival Nadzeya Ostapchuk (centre) and Russian Yevgeniya Kolodko, right. Photo / Photosport

Reports 80 New Zealand athletes have been allegedly caught up in a drugs probe will once again rev up calls from a misguided minority to authorise drug-taking in sport.

These usually come from people who also believe the war on recreational drugs is lost.

Some are themselves (or have been) recreational drugs users and the natural human instinct is to want everyone else to see things their way.

Portugal, which has made some astonishing progress in reducing addictions and social ills since decriminalising drugs in 2001, is often held up as an example — although it had serious problems not seen here with 1 in every 100 Portuguese with a heroin addiction; a country rife with overdoses, deaths and runaway Aids statistics.

However, we should not confuse drugs as a social evil with people who take performance-enhancing drugs as a way of advancing themselves in sport. The way forward there probably involves more courtroom action, not less.

It will be interesting, as more details of the Drug Free New Zealand probe emerge, to see how many of the athletes allegedly involved are cosmetic users trying to make themselves beautiful or, for example, rugby players trying to boost themselves into elite consideration.

Clenbuterol, the drug at the heart of the DFNZ probe, is a substance which demonstrates the difference between people adopting a means to an end and someone taking drugs to escape or endure the realities of life.

It is an anabolic steroid which reduces body fat and builds muscle. It's a performance-enhancer but also a beauty product with no sporting advantage gained; gym bunnies narcissistically admiring their deltoids in the gymnasium mirror are a not uncommon sight.

But clenbuterol has also caused anti-drugs authorities a headache. It is used in farming in some less regulated parts of the world (China and Mexico, for example) to beef up the size of animals, an obvious boon to those producing the livestock.

The substance can then be passed on to humans through the meat. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) has been forced, on some occasions, to look the other way if it cannot be proven clenbuterol has been taken as a supplement. Athletes, instead, insist they ingested it by eating tainted meat.

Wada is now pursuing technology which can differentiate between clenbuterol out of a bottle and that from a juicy Chinese steak.

So the difference is clear. The gym bunnies may be making a personal choice and maybe there is a case for exempting them, poor souls.

But there is one thing for certain stemming from the 80-strong people allegedly involved in buying steroids from an illegal website: they point the way to the next rung up the ladder, the elite sportspeople, who remain the most difficult target. The chemists are better, the knowledge more advanced, the prize (wealth and fame) bigger.

A Wada anonymous survey involving 2000 athletes found an estimated 29 per cent at the 2011 world track and field championships had doped in the previous year. The biological passport, supposed to be a breakthrough by highlighting sudden changes in body chemistry, is challenged by micro-dosing — supplies of banned substances which give a performance boost but in quantities too small and too quick to detect — among other things.

The momentum is still with the cheats, even with Russia's recent disgrace. Those failing drugs tests remains low, at 1-2 per cent; more recent anonymous athlete surveys suggest those who dope is somewhere between 15-40 per cent of all athletes.

In an infamous survey of athletes from the 1980s, more than 50 per cent said they'd take a substance that would win them a gold medal but would kill them in five years.

So the answer may be more courtroom drama at this level — an idea espoused by David Howman, the Kiwi former head of Wada, earlier this year, when he said those affected by drugs cheats could pursue lawsuits for lost income.

Look at Valerie Adams when her Belarusian shot put rival Nadzeya Ostapchuk was outed — Adams' list of international victories stands to jump to 107 titles from 56. That could have an obvious effect on her income through lost endorsements and the like.

The daft thing is that in 2005, 167 East German athletes went to court for damages for being subjected to state-organised doping. They received cash settlements in 2007. So the cheaters — even those who did so unknowingly — enjoyed a payout; those cheated out of medals: zero ... Go figure.

No, punishing those who seek to benefit from cheating by drugs must be ramped up. Or a crazy world will get even crazier.