Use of drugs in Sports Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Use of drugs in Sports - Dissertation Example A quick review of print and electronic literatures reveals that doping has been an integral and controversial issue for the sports fraternity since historical times. In most literatures on doping in sports, the types of drugs used and their effects on individual sportsmen, sportswomen, their families, their nations, their fans and the sporting fraternity have been given quite a wide coverage. This kind of coverage emphasizes the importance of the fight against doping in sports. Besides, seeking to ensure a level and fair playing field for sportsmen and women, the fight against doping has been portrayed in literatures as seeking to eliminate and reduce the negative effects of doping on health, well being and the image of sports (Berryman, 1992). Literatures have also covered the interventions designed and impended to curtail doping problems in sports. For example, as a consequent of drug use by athletes and the subsequent health effects and deaths, sports governing bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set up medical and testing commissions to test athletes for signs of illicit substances and ban the use of these drugs and other performance enhancing substances. Although these testing started in a small scale in the 1968 Mexico Olympics, it would be introduced in a full-scale at the Olympic Games in Munich four years later (Wayne, 2000). Following the banning of substances such as anabolic steroids, many sportsmen were disqualified in the years that followed 1975 and 1983.