Lifetime ban for first time steroid offenders

[Erica]

At the USA Track and Field Annual Meeting last weekend, the Athlete Advisory Committee voted to support the proposed lifetime ban for a first time steroid offense. The IAAF rule states that a first time offender is banned for a minimum of two years up to life. The elite USA track and field athletes want to send a message to the rest of the world that we are being more proactive against drug users, and encourage the IAAF to follow suit. Although it may take several years before other countries or the IAAF increase penalties, we are hopeful they will, just as they did with introducing out of competition testing.

It was very encouraging to have many of the world's best track and field athletes, including Maurice Green, Jon Drummon, Allen Johnson, Stacy Dragila, Jearl Miles-Clark, Sheila Burrel and many others in the same room striving to do everything we could do to make our sport drug free.

To read more about this, go to: http://www.usatf.org/news/showRelease.a ... -12-05.xml

We decided not to increase penalties for stimulant offenses because so many people take things on accident, not knowing they can cause a positive drug test.