The Sports Doping Market

This book examines sports doping from production and distribution to use, detection, and punishment. Detailing the daily operations of the trade and its gray area as a semi-legal market, the authors cover important issues ranging from the diversion of regular drugs from legal market chains, the expanding scale of counterfeiting and the resulting health risks,  to the role of organized crime in sports doping, and the protection long provided by sports ruling bodies and federations to elite athletes and their suppliers.This innovative book examines the supply-side of the sports doping market, and is the first study of its kind to estimate the size and revenues of a national market for doping products; including the suppliers' profits. The Sports Doping Market also discusses in depth  the challenges of the international antidoping regime and considers for the first time how anti-doping criminal provisions and their enforcement can contribute to improve the fight against doping within and outside the sports world.The book's extensive research:Estimates the nation-wide demand for performance-enhancing products Traces the route from legal substances to illegal uses.Identifies classes of suppliers and their methods of operation.Tracks typical distribution chains from suppliers to users.Examines the economics of the market: prices, profits, revenue.Assesses the state of anti-doping law enforcement efforts.Starting with an unprecedented case study in Italy, the intense scrutiny from one pivotal country yields a potential template for research and policy on a world scale. The Sports Doping Market makes solid contributions to the work of researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in corruption, drug trafficking, and criminal networks; researchers in sports science and public health; and policymakers.