Watch Travis Tygart and Yuliya Stepanova talk doping at US Congressional hearing live today (July 25) at 2 pm ET

I'm watching this thing.

I want doping criminalized. However, I don't understand why we only will criminalize doping "at major international competitions."

The txt of the propsed law says, "It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly and intentionally conduct, manage, supervise, direct, abet, or participate in doping fraud at or in preparation for any major international competition."

5 years of prison and $100,000 fine if you dop.

So great for track and field, but what about MLB, NFL, NBA?

Doping should be illegal period for pro and international sports.

But I'm wondering if anyone thinks the proposed law would actually ban doping by MLB players, and some NBA players because often there are many foreign players in a game. The law defines a "major international competition":

(3)Major international competition

The term major international competition means any professional or amateur sporting competition, including competitions that are comprised of a series of bilateral games, in which—

(A)either—

(i)four or more United States athletes are contestants; or

(ii)two or more United States corporations act as corporate sponsors; and

(B)athletes representing at least three countries other than the United States are contestants."

Anyone think that would ban doping in MLB?

Text of proposed law here:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr6067/text

The real pro sports won't allow it as its a part of the culture of pro competition .

Track and field does not warrant the penalties you propose. Criminalizing doesn't make sense at this juncture.

Rules with teeth do though. If your caught...

1. Money you win has to be returned within 30 days or personal accounts will be frozen.

2. Your coach will be suspended

3. Your agent will be suspended

4. Your training group suspended from competition

Self policing would turn things around immediately.

No support for me, as if they don't include the roid sports then this is just a waste of time. Pro and college (as college is where the real use is) Football, Baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, US governments (local, state and National) spend millions if not billions financing their teams and stadiums. While the International sports get leftovers.

A lot of political grandstanding if you ask me. Politicians talk tough, act important but never penalize the money sources. DC is up for sale to the highest bidder.

What a waste of tax payers money!!!!

So you want the country that imprisons a greater percent of its citizens to imprison even more? How about we just let the governing bodies police themselves, and keep the government focused on more important matters? Like welfare, err, bribery, err, support for farmers impacted by the tariffs?

5 years in prison and $100,000 fine? This is too severe.

With respect to the prison sentence, what distance runner or other thin endurance athlete could survive 5 years of butt-raping?

With respect to the fine, how many participants in international competition have that kind of money? It's just as likely to be a guy who came in 17th at USA's who dopes as it is Galen Rupp.

I also agree with other posters who say national sports should have doping criminalized.

However, the punishments need to be exotic and painful, particularly for Americans. For example, anyone who dopes:

~ has their driver's license revoked for 6 months.

~ is disallowed from airplane travel for 2 years.

~ by court order, has their credit cards closed.

~ must turn in their smartphone and all other smart devices that allow social media communication (e.g. computer but not refridgerator) to the police for 30 days. It has to be a period short enough that they won't buy another one, but long enough to be terribly inconveniencing.

~ HAS THEIR SPORTS CONTRACT VOIDED, and their bank accounts monitored for 1 year to ensure that they are not still receiving money from some sympathetic sports entity (e.g. a company, a coach, etc.). This will force many to get a real job.

~ Has their urine screened for banned substances daily for a month, twice per week for 2 months thereafter, and weekly for 3 months thereafter. My hope is that this prevents them from treating their sports-ban period like a relaxing vacation by doing things such as smoking marijuana, or as a base-building period by doing things such as taking EPO.

~ A notice is sent to all restaurants, coffee-shops, and food-service establishments in a 50-mile radius of their house that the doper is not to be served for 1 year. Take away an American Starbucks-addict's coffee, and watch them writhe.

Dont be silly wrote:

2. Your coach will be suspended

3. Your agent will be suspended

4. Your training group suspended from competition

FMD, that's a bit harsh lol. So an individual loose canon secretly dopes yet potentially dozens of total innocents get suspended too? Glad you're not running the country.

Dont be silly wrote:

Rules with teeth do though. If your caught...

1. Money you win has to be returned within 30 days or personal accounts will be frozen.

Hitting the hip pocket nerve is the one that really hurts them, the payback of dollars and lifetime sports ban to stop them competing and earning dollars again, unlike Gatlin.

wejo wrote:

I want doping criminalized. However, I don't understand why we only will criminalize doping "at major international competitions."

I'm sorry, but that is bs. No victim, no crime. If someone took some dope to go from 18 min to 15 min 5k who are they hurting? I understand major sporting events because the athlete is breaking contract. But, I don't see anything wrong with some hobby jogger getting on some Dr. Ferrari doping program to run faster. It is their body who are they hurting by winning some local nobody race by using PEDs?

No. **** this, seriously: "everything I don't like should be illegal" . We don't need more laws that give the feds the power to destroy peoples lives and livelihood for no reason. The international federations IAAF, WADA, CAS should grow up and actually ban people and agents. Such actions are completely within their rights - they can solve the doping problem. Making something illegal only for "athletes" at "major international competitions" is horrible precedent. Opens the door for miss use, abuse, and regulatory capture.

wejo wrote:

I want doping criminalized. However, I don't understand why we only will criminalize doping "at major international competitions."

The bill isn't intended to apply to MLB or NBA competition, which does not involve athletes who are "representing" various countries as "contestants," although it could obviously be applied to a MLB or NBA player who is also a contestant in "major international competition" as defined in the bill. If there were any serious possibiliy that it could be applied to MLB, NBA, or NFL competition, I'm pretty sure that it would never see the light of day.

I have no involvement or prior familiarity with this particular bill, but I've read the text, and I'm more familiar than most about various issues that it adressses, and I'm inclined to believe that it's a truly awful piece of legislation in almost every respect, including its creation of a new class of federal crimes and private rights of action, its criminal penalty and civil fee-shifting provisions, its retroactivity clause, its lengthy statutes of limitation and tolling provisions, its engagement of the Department of Health and Human Services, and its breathtaking jurisdictional reach over international sports competitions (and individuals involved in those competitions) that may have little to do with the United States.

When legislators and judges get involved in the regulation of sport, they often behave more like starry-eyed fans than hard-nosed public officials. I think of the dreadful opinion byJustice Holmes holding that professional baseball does not constitute interstate commerce for purposes of federal antitrust law (because, after all, it's just a bunch of teams playing games that each occur in a single state), the embarrassingly sentimental opinion of Justice Blackmun in the Curt Flood case (including a long list of Justice Blackmun's favorite baseball players), and various other judicial opinions that are frivolously written to reflect the structure of the four quarters of a football game, the nine innings of a baseball game, or the tale of "Casey at the Bat." Law is, in my view, serious stuff, and sweeping federal legislation that purports to create (with retroactive effect) a criminal and civil regime with jurisdiction over the whole world should be based on much more than than visceral feelings of fair play, tearful stories about childhood dreams that have beeen dashed and Olympic medals that been stolen, expressions of outrage over evil Russian sports cheats, and what little other testimony I've seen offered here.

But I could be wrong, and I think that I have a pretty open mind about these matters.

Thank you

Avocado's Number wrote:

Law is, in my view, serious stuff, and sweeping federal legislation that purports to create (with retroactive effect) a criminal and civil regime with jurisdiction over the whole world should be based on much more than than visceral feelings of fair play, tearful stories about childhood dreams that have beeen dashed and Olympic medals that been stolen, expressions of outrage over evil Russian sports cheats, and what little other testimony I've seen offered here.

Vancomycin wrote:

Thank you

:)

It's pretty obvious the only people who will be targetted are Russians - they give the game away when they said they were inspired to introduce the bill by 'the brutal Putin regime'. The wording barely makes any reference to the possibility a home athlete or group could be hit by it.

Note that its going to be retrospective and probably the whistleblowers have already handed over a bunch of names of people they want revenge against. Their international bank accounts will get frozen (by orders to other countries over the phone like they do with Iranian assets) and maybe international arrest warrants served so they can get nabbed if they leave Russia and go to a country with an extradition treaty with the US. If they stay in Russia and keep all their money in rubles they'll be harder to get at.

Meanwhile I think the USA should cut out all these attempts at extra-territorial jurisdiction before everyone else starts doing it too.

I have a couple of the same questions: - Jurisdiction -- who would be subject to such a bill? Congress has power over US citizens, as well as visitors on US soil. If enacted, does the US think they could bring Russian athletes in Tokyo 2020 to the US criminal or civil courts? Could foreign athletes take US athletes to court? This question of jurisdiction over-reach intrigues me. Suppose Russia passes similar legislation, or Kenya. Would US athletes have to submit to their courts, just for competing against their athletes together in a third country? - By linking it to "major international competitions", this appears to exclude major US domestic competitions. Is this an oversight or a double standard or a concern? - As a side note, it also appears to exclude out of competition testing. Probably rightly so as establishing fraud or showing harm lacking any competition payment may be difficult. - Department of Health and Human services gets to decide what is a performance enhancing drug? This risks the creation of two different lists that international athletes must be made aware of. A drug that is not banned by WADA and perfectly acceptable for international athletes who are signatories to WADA, could be defined as a PED under US law, and subject them to criminal prosecution. Or an athlete banned by WADA or the IOC at the Olympics could be for a drug, e.g. Meldonium, that the US failed to consider. The bill doesn't include any language about banned methods. This overlooks that the Dept. of Health and Human services has a job already. They are likely already underfunded which brings up side issues of meeting objectives like protecting the health of US citizens and increased taxes or increased US public debt.

Avocado's Number wrote:

I have no involvement or prior familiarity with this particular bill, but I've read the text, and I'm more familiar than most about various issues that it adressses, and I'm inclined to believe that it's a truly awful piece of legislation in almost every respect, including its creation of a new class of federal crimes and private rights of action, its criminal penalty and civil fee-shifting provisions, its retroactivity clause, its lengthy statutes of limitation and tolling provisions, its engagement of the Department of Health and Human Services, and its breathtaking jurisdictional reach over international sports competitions (and individuals involved in those competitions) that may have little to do with the United States.

rekrunner wrote:

I have a couple of the same questions:

- Jurisdiction -- who would be subject to such a bill? Congress has power over US citizens, as well as visitors on US soil. If enacted, does the US think they could bring Russian athletes in Tokyo 2020 to the US criminal or civil courts?

They could try athletes in absentia and go after any savings prize money etc that is held by any bank that deals with the US. I don't see them getting people physically into a US court (unless they are really stupid and show up to defend themselves).