Rethinking Drug Use in Sport

Drug free sport is an unattainable aspiration. In this critical, paradigm-shifting reappraisal of contemporary drug policy in sport, Bob Stewart and Aaron Smith argue that drug use in sport is an inexorable consequence of the nature, structure and culture of sport itself. By de-mythologising and de-moralising the assumptions that prop up current drug management controls, and re-emphasising the importance of the long-term well-being and civil rights of the athlete, they offer a powerful argument for creating a legitimate space for drug use in sport.
The book offers a broad ranging overview of the social and commercial pressures impelling drug use, and maps the full historical and social extent of the problem. With policy analysis at the centre of the discussion, the book explores the complete range of social, management, policy, scientific, technological and health issues around drugs in sport, highlighting the irresolvable tension between the zero-tolerance model as advanced by WADA and the harm-reduction approach adopted by drug education and treatment agencies. While there are no simple solutions, as long as drugs use is endemic in wider society the authors argue that a more nuanced and progressive approach is required in order to safeguard and protect the health, social liberty and best interests of athletes and sports people, as well as the value of sport itself.

Bob Stewart died shortly after The Yellow Rose was first published. He was 75 and had been a writer for his entire professional life. As a freelance journalist, he conducted literally thousands of interviews with people famous and infamous, ranging from presidents to serial killers to movie starts. The interviews were published in Life Magazine, People Magazine, and many others. In the entertainment field, he wrote the weekly cover story for TV guide and did movie interviews for KSAT TV. His hometown newspaper, The San Antonio Light, was a venue for much of this work. After retiring, he turned to writing both fiction and non-fiction books. They ranged in theme and style from Man to Man, When The Woman You Love Has Breast Cancer, to the comic detective novel Alias Thomas A. Katt. In The Yellow Rose, Bob presents a story based on the history of the founding of Texas, the state he loved.

1. Revisiting the Drugs in Sport Debate 2. Setting the Scene 1: Drug Use in Contemporary Society 3. Setting the Scene 2: Critical Drug Use Incidents and Cases in Sport 4. Setting the Scene 3: Scale and Scope of Drug Use in Sport 5. Setting the Scene 4: Player and Athlete Attitudes to Drug Use in Sport 6. Framing the Debate 1: Neo-liberalism and the Cult of Individualism 7. Framing the Debate 2: Social Ecology and the Primacy of Context 8. Framing the Debate 3: Capital Accumulation through Bodily Enhancement 9. Framing the Debate 4: Life-Course Analysis as a Tool for Identifying Gateways to Success 10. The WADA Revolution 1: How it Happened and What it Does 11. The WADA Revolution 2: Sport League Responses 12. The WADA Revolution 3: A Critical Appraisal 13. Re-thinking Drug Control in Sport 1: Why Regulation? 14. Re-thinking Drug Control in Sport 2: Bringing it All Together 15. Rethinking Drug Control in Sport 3: The Case for a New Deal