Crackdowns on Olympic Drug Testing

By Brent Bankosky

Substance use wasn’t as great an issue among the Olympic community until this year. With new developments in science and testing methods, drug tests became more meticulous. More attention is being paid to substances because they can heighten performance dramatically, but at the cost of fairness and well-being.

This is of supreme consideration for the Olympic community. Regardless of whether or not it has noticeable effects, substance is, and has always been, a health concern. Medical professionals and their studies on the remarkable array of substances out there definitively conclude positive and negative health benefits.

So the issue is not so much the positive, but the negative. People look up to professional athletes; kids especially idolize them. The Olympic stage is visible on a global scale, and when issues surrounding substance come to the forefront, they usually can’t be ignored. The public has a certain level of awareness, and there are more important things than who did what, namely the health repercussions of substance use.

More specifically, steroids are the predominant substance found in most Olympic drug testing procedures. Components surrounding the issue include why a substance is banned, potential performance benefits, and short and long term repercussions to individuals’ health.

Steroids are at the front of public attention to substance use among athletes. However, there are more important things than the people involved. The public should be getting information and facts, not biased reports on who used what. This is most true in the Olympic community, because it has a world-wide stage and universal visibility.

The 2012 Olympics are turning into the most drug-tested games in history. Athletes undergo scrutiny even before arriving in London, and it’s because they have apparently found new ways to cheat. Steroids have undergone a consistent evolution so as to find ways around being detected.

Athletes this year are undergoing continual modes of drug-testing. Official testers have been working just as hard to eliminate this sort of threat. They have developed new methods of detection for new sorts of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. The reason for concern is to preserve the integrity of the Games, and also to ensure that it isn’t contaminated with any substance. For years now, this has been an unfortunate concern for the Olympic community.

ABOUT Brent Bankosky

He is a veteran of pharmaceutical practice and policy, which includes anything related to the drug supply industry, including drug testing. He has outlined a number of causes for new restrictions and guidelines for Olympic drug testing. Brent Bankosky is a credible voice on the health repercussions of substance use, no matter what the grade.