The use and abuse of drugs by top athletes is recognized as a major issue among those who are organizing and supervising the sports world. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), especially, has been making great efforts to eliminate the specific drugs from the sports world since 1968. Despite of the reinforcement of doping control regulations, fewer athletes still use the banned drugs or new drugs secretly in order to improve their performance.
It is fact that the reinforcing regulations have produced new problems, e.g. what constitutes a reasonable penalty, a generally accepted laboratory method for testing for new drugs or ways (e.g. abortion and blood doping), and what constitutes an invasion of an athlete's privacy. These problems would not arise or exist without the proclamation and enforcement of doping control regulations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to prove the justification of doping control regulations from the points of equal assessment in sports contests and of the social influence that the athletes have.
There are the arguments proposed against the regulations which suggest that they limit the liberty of choice, that they don't foster a true morality, and that they are paternalistic even though there are many people in favor of them. After we were aware of the caution which had been insisted by M. Brown & P. Foulquie, we examined the probable consequences of two cases. The first case was where doping for performance-enhancement in sports contests was not prohibited, the second was where such doping was prohibited. The probable consequences of both cases could not be assessed equally in sports contests because there were (are) fewer athletes who use the banned drugs (or ways).
From the point of the social influence that the athletes have, we discussed two propositions which had been limiting the liberty of choice. The one proposition was that ‘doping is harmful to other athletes’, and the other was that ‘doping is harmful to public well-fare’. On the former proposition, we pointed out that it applied to contact sports. On the latter proposition, we found that its validity was proved by the reason why top athletes were taken as public figures and also generally were receiving public financial support.
From the above considerations, we concluded that IOC's doping control regulations were justified. Nevertheless, we recommended that IOC should try to resolve the early stated problems that the regulations cause.
