The sporting crusade to make possession of performance-enhancing drugs illegal could be spiked by public health concerns. Rob Dawson was once runner-up for the Fife Schools sprint title, but yesterday he challenged Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Great Britain athletics captain, over his aspiration to criminalise possession of steroids, human growth hormone, and other substances banned in sport.
Ming, a former Scottish sprint record-holder, tried and failed to introduce a private bill some 20 years ago, but hopes to try again.
Dwain Chambers, having served a two-year ban, is again fastest in Europe, legally entitled to race. The affront he constitutes to sport, and more aggressive European attitudes to doping, may harden our British Parliamentary attitudes.
Dr Dawson, a Newcastle general practitioner, runs a needle exchange for sport drug users. He insists: "The risk of potential increase in the spread of HIV, Aids, and hepatitis, would be enormous if possession were criminalised," he said. "It would drive users underground. They'd not use needle-exchange clinics . . . Far from being a health problem in sport, we will have a health problem in society caused directly by action to protect sport."
He believes Ming should abandon the idea, and seek other means of combating cheats, such as having athletes sign contracts and then sue defaulters for fraud.
"Ming is an elder statesman. It's a noble idea, and fits in with 2012. He may get backed on this one, but it will reap the whirlwind afterwards. HIV figures, abscesses, hepatitis could rise, just through criminalising people who are doing no harm to anybody but themselves.
"In absolute numbers of harm, they can't be characterised as a public health risk. Ming's campaign could create a public health risk where one doesn't currently exist. And then the debate would be: And exactly what harm were they doing, doctor?' The truth is we just don't know.
"We still have people coming in from 14 years ago when we opened, and still get new people every week. We've a number of high-level sports people. I won't identify the sports."
Citing Government statistics which suggest only two potential steroid-related deaths in the UK in the decade to 2006, as opposed to 599 from motorbike accidents, he insists this hardly constitutes an indication of "significant absolute risk from drugs."
The Edinburgh University graduate runs a clinic which has given steroid and needle-exchange advice to around 1000 sportsmen and women. "We launched it because of the numbers attending needle exchanges who were steroid users," he said. "I have never prescribed anabolic steroids for any athlete, and I'm wholly against their use. I do my best to convince people not to use them, but the issue is simple: Medicine has a primary duty of care, and it's unethical to withhold treatment.
"As a clinician, it's not my job to put my moral judgement on somebody else's behaviour. It's my job to treat the patient. My remit is to dissuade anyone from using these drugs. If that's not possible, my remit is to minimise harm.
"If I can get someone to use no drugs at all, that's ideal. If I can get them to use lower doses that's acceptable. And I can keep chipping away and try to get them to use less. There is the opportunity to blood- test, to see if there's any obvious harm they're going to come to, and then intervene medically."
Patients include an athlete whose ALT liver test (normally around 40) was 1600. Another was injecting 21ml of testosterone daily. "The medically recommended dose would be one to two millilitres every four weeks," he said. "His buttocks were awash with testosterone. But when he stopped, all his tests came back to normal. People do stupid things to their bodies."
The activities of the Durham Health Authority clinic have reinforced an issue first exposed by The Herald in 1996. Namely that Home Office figures on hard drug-use were seriously skewed. They remain so. The Government is aware of this and has done nothing.
The data doesn't differentiate between needles exchanged for injecting recreational drugs and those used in sport. Hard-drug statistics are consequently inflated.
"We now believe sport drug-users constitute 43% of all needle exchanges," said Dr Dawson, "but there's no way of knowing whether needles are being issued for recreational drug use, or performance sport and image-enhancing use."
