Anti-doping group to show some leniency

In what appears to be a concession to critics, the World Anti-Doping Agency said Wednesday it plans to grant greater leeway to doping prosecutors and judges to reduce sanctions against athletes accused of drug violations deemed to be accidental or trivial.

The proposed change would apply only in cases involving detected stimulants, but the action represents a sea change in WADA’s approach to enforcement.

The agency had held rigorously to a “strict liability” policy, treating as a serious violation the presence of any banned substance in an athlete’s body, even at concentrations too low to affect performance.

A Times investigation disclosed in December that WADA policies resulted in numerous instances of severe sanctions against athletes for minor and unwitting ingestion of banned substances. Among the cases:

* Alpine skier Alain Baxter used a Vicks Vapor Inhaler bought in Utah to treat his chronic nasal congestion. Unlike the Vicks inhalers sold at home in Britain, the American version contained traces of a chemical structurally related to methamphetamine, a banned stimulant. Baxter was forced to forfeit his bronze medal won at the 2002 Winter Games.

* American Zach Lund, a world-class skeleton sled racer, was found to have traces of finasteride, an ingredient in anti-baldness medication, in his urine in 2005. The substance had been banned over concerns that it might mask the presence of steroids in urine samples. He lost all his sponsorships and was suspended from competition for one year.

* U.S. sprinter Torri Edwards unknowingly ingested an obscure additive called nikethamide in a couple of otherwise innocent glucose tablets she took at an exhibition race. She was suspended for two years.

The proposed amendment to the World Anti-Doping Code would partially address rising complaints from international sports officials and anti-doping organizations, many of whom have recommended more far-reaching reforms.

“You end up feeling a bit awkward about imposing a two-year sanction on someone who, when all is said and done, wasn’t doping,” WADA President Dick Pound said.

Pound, a noted hard-liner on sports doping, continued to insist that most doping cases result from deliberate drug use. He also seemed intent on playing down effects of the proposed amendment.

“This is not a free ride for anyone,” he said of the proposal for more flexibility in sanctions.

Pound, 64, who will retire from his post at the end of this year, made his remarks at a symposium aimed at outlining for sports journalists the agency’s plans for revising the code.

The revision process will culminate in a drafting conference this November in Madrid and amendments remain subject to change.

Pound repeated warnings that doping is a growing problem in international sports and asserted that “doping is very, very seldom an accident.”

Significantly, however, he also noted that accidental ingestion “can and does happen.”

Pound defended WADA against recent criticism of its policies and procedures, particularly in The Times report. The paper disclosed, among other things, that WADA relies at times on disputed scientific evidence and that its appeals process is stacked against accused athletes who must prove their innocence.

“Don’t be fooled by [athletes’] protestations of innocence, of biased appeal procedures, of weak science,” Pound said. “The overwhelming number of doping cases are planned and deliberate.”

He also contended that trafficking in illicit doping substances has become so lucrative that it has attracted the interest of organized crime.

“We’ve been told by authorities that the value of the sports drug market exceeds the value of marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined,” he said, later attributing the startling claim to Interpol.

However, other statistics undermined the assertion and underscored criticisms that Pound is sometimes prone to exaggeration.

For example, the world trade in illicit steroids, the most common doping compound, was estimated at $400 million in 2005, according to figures posted online by the University of Maryland Center for Substance Abuse Research. By contrast, the combined trade in marijuana, cocaine and heroin in 2003 was estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at nearly 1,000 times that amount -- about $322 billion in retail value.

Officials at Interpol, the international police agency’s headquarters in Lyons, France, could not be reached late Wednesday.

WADA’s proposal to relax the strict liability rules involves removing certain drugs, chiefly stimulants, from its list of banned substances -- those for which the presence in any concentration in an athlete’s urine sample is treated as a doping violation -- and moving them to its less restrictive list of “specified substances,” the sanction for which can be as light as a public warning.

The change would be accompanied by an increase in the maximum penalty for taking steroids, hormones and other banned drugs to four years in “aggravated cases,” such as when there is evidence of deliberate long-term abuse, WADA director general David Howman said.

Among the other substances under consideration for more lenient treatment is marijuana, which has been the subject of heated debate within WADA.

Numerous national anti-doping bodies have objected to WADA’s hard line on pot on the grounds that it is a recreational drug with no known performance-enhancing characteristics in any sport. The ban, they argue, amounts to a venture in social policymaking under the cover of the fight against sports doping.

Pound hinted that he agrees.

“I’m trying to think of how many sports you’d be better at under the influence of marijuana,” he said in an interview with The Times during a break in the symposium. But he said removing cannabis entirely from WADA’s jurisdiction would provoke opposition from the United States.

“Having cannabis on the list is essential to having U.S. participation in the [anti-doping] program,” he said.

The U.S. government representative on WADA’s board, Scott Burns, is deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Howman said the agency is not considering relaxing the sanction rules for steroids or blood hormones such as erythropoeitin, which WADA believes always reflect an athlete’s deliberate decision to dope.

Some stimulants, on the other hand, may appear in urine tests after an athlete has ingested an arguably innocuous compound, including certain over-the-counter cold remedies, in which they are ingredients.

He said WADA expects to leave in place the rules limiting appeals arbitrators’ flexibility in imposing sanctions for those compounds. The rules allow arbitrators to reduce or eliminate suspensions when they find that an accused athlete had little or no fault of negligence. But these exemptions are rarely granted, and the arbitrators are generally barred from cutting the specified sanction by more than half.

“I wouldn’t anticipate allowing them to cut by more than a half,” he said.

Another policy under consideration is to reward athletes who voluntarily admit to having doped, possibly by offering a reduced suspension.

“We’re exploring incentives,” Howman said.

michael.hiltzik@latimes.com