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The goal of this paper is to serve as a general treatise on the vast topic of use of performance enhancing drugs in athletic competition. It begins by laying out the extensive history of doping in sports, from the ancient Romans to the East German Olympic swim team to the steroids scandal in baseball. The paper moves on to describe and discuss the many medical effects that use of performance enhancing drugs might trigger. The paper concludes by discussing the appropriateness of anti-doping policy in general by analyzing and scrutinizing the general strands of arguments that are used to support bans on doping. While many rationales are rejected, a few are ultimately accepted and they justify the implementation of anti-doping policies.

At an early age, every one of us learns to despise cheating. Whether it be on the playground or in the classroom, cheating is wrong. Even as we grow up and appreciate the nuances of competition in business and in social interaction, there remains in us something of that child-like hatred of the cheater. We no longer play kickball on the playground and instead we fill stadiums to watch Olympic athletes perform Olympian feats of strength, speed and endurance, yet still we cling to a notion that sporting competition ought to be fair, pure of dishonesty and cheating. While we enjoy to see fierce competition and amazing athletic performance, when it comes to a steroid-fueled Ben Johnson winning the 100 meter race in Seoul or man-like Chinese female swimmers racking up world records, the use of performance enhancing techniques, whether it be drugs or blood transfusion robs the joy from the enjoyment of sport. Examples of doping abound in almost every sport, with every international competition comes more news of athletes caught using banned substance. At a foundational level, the cheating spoils something. It makes the sport and the competition merely an illusion. It works to destroy both the sport and the athletes competing. This paper explores the depths of the effort we, as a society, are willing to go in order to preserve the essence of fairness in competition and to protect those that compete. It lays out a comprehensive description of the state of doping and its regulation in the modern Olympic Movement. It describes the past, present and future of doping in international competition. This paper does not address professional sport leagues, where doping issues are also prominent, because doping regulation is normally a negotiated part of an employment agreement. Leagues negotiate with players unions and devise a mutually agreeable system. Such systems do not reach the scope and complexity of the international sports effort. The Olympic Movement, all of the sports that comprise Olympic competition and occur in international games between countries, represents a far more complex and difficult regulatory challenge. In fact, the lessons learned in the Olympic Movement’s regulation of doping might prove of value in professional sport doping regulation.