World Anti-Doping Agency Dir General David Howman believes the "primary culprits" in the Australian Football League side Essendon drugs scandal are the "support staff who oversaw the injection program" rather than the 34 footballers his organization will next month bring before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, according to Chip Le Grand of THE AUSTRALIAN. Howman "defended the decision" to rehear the doping case against current and former Essendon players who have already lost three seasons to the scandal. Asked "who the bad guys were in the Essendon and Cronulla scandals," Howman said, "They are the ones advising or cajoling athletes to break the laws. I don't know who they are in that whole scenario, except it looks pretty obvious that they are members of the support staff." Howman said that there had been a "huge increase in the engagement of the criminal underworld" in the trade of steroids, anti-aging peptides and other banned substances (THE AUSTRALIAN, 10/16). In Melbourne, Samantha Lane reported Howman said that imprisonment "could be the most effective way to get rid of doping in sport." He also proposed the establishment of a "new international body that would police all integrity issues -- doping being just one." Howman characterized sport as being "at a crossroads." He said, "How big a disaster do you need to start reflecting on the issue of governance? How big a disaster do you need to look at issues of integrity and what's going on?" Howman said that threatening athletes with prison time "struck him as far more compelling than even a four-year ban from sport." Howman: "I want to pose the question: should doping be a criminal matter? It is in Italy, and we think -- some of us -- that the real deterrent that cheating athletes fear is the fear of going to prison" (THE AGE, 10/15).
