Exclusive – Campbell: Clarity on drugs laws will help deter potential offenders

Former Olympic medallist Darren Campbell has told talkSPORT that athletics' drugs laws need to be clearer to ensure that potential offenders are deterred from taking banned substances.

The former 100 metre runner saw his 2002 European Championship 4x100m relay gold medal taken away from him after team-mate Dwain Chambers tested positive for performance-enhancing drug THG in 2003.

And a Court of Arbitration for sport ruling could now see Chambers back racing at the Olympics after originally being banned for life from the games.

But Campbell thinks that athletics needs to clean up its rules on anti-doping and put in place harsh penalties so that potential offenders don’t harm their own career by taking a gamble and taking drugs.

He told Drive Time: “If you’re 21 and you know you’re only going to serve a two-year ban, which then means you can come back when you’re 23, then it changes the gamble you’re taking, you can still have a ten year career.

“There are people out there who will always decide that the easy option is the best option for them but if the deterrent is there you make your decision on what the ramifications are.

“If the ramifications are easy someone might decide, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a two-year ban, I can have a successful career and I can still compete at all the major championships, still win an Olympic title.’

“You’re putting young people in a position where, if they’re not necessarily in a position where they’re full educated with the ramifications, they might take that gamble. But why do they take that gamble? They take it because they’ll be back in two years if they get caught.

“If you don’t put the deterrent there it’s like saying, ‘OK, you murdered somebody for the first time and you were young and impressionable, we’ll let you off this time but don’t murder anybody else.’

“We have to get to a point where we’ve got total clarity because athletics, which I love, has been in the position for a number of years where people are not sure what they are watching.

“I now have to listen to people say, ‘why don’t they let them all take drugs and then we can see how fast everyone can really run.’

“In my humble opinion, [if] you put something in that is extremely powerful, it seems a little harsh but if you know what the rules are, you know what the consequences are for what you decide to do.

“If you put the plans in place that mean hopefully we don’t ban somebody for life who didn’t know what they were taking then that’s all you can do.

“I’ve seen how it has destroyed Dwain Chambers and I wouldn’t want anybody to go through that.

“And unless you put a deterrent there that makes people decide, ‘I don’t want to go through that either.’ Or, ‘I’m not going to take that gamble.’ Then what are we going to keep doing?

“Every three or four years visit it and go, ‘Another young sprinter has been caught and they’ve been banned, we’ve let them back in.’ then there are all the questions, ‘is what they’ve taken still in their systems? Are they still benefitting?’

“We’ve got no clarity and whilst we’ve got no clarity we’ve got no direction and while we’ve got no direction we’ve got this debate raising its head again. All the way back in 2003 this occurred.

“We have to get to a situation where there is one set of rules. At the moment there are two, three, four sets of rules.

“Now you can turn around and you can say we’re strong but if everyone is fully clear as to what the ramifications of you taking drugs and getting caught are you’re in a better position to make a decision.”