These doping substances are especially popular on the Darknet

Where do doping athletes get the banned substances from? Prescription drugs are often involved in cheating in the world of sports. And by no means always does a doctor support these illegal activities as a mentor.

A study from Australia says that in 2020, only 17 percent of all anabolic steroid crimes involved healthcare professionals.

You can also easily order medical products online without a prescription. There are two ways to do this, neither of which are legal. On the one hand, you order from a foreign supplier. If the package gets stuck at customs, the way to the buyer is short. For example, several current doping cases in Swiss sport came to light.

The winding paths in the so-called Darknet are harder to follow. Dealers and buyers remain anonymous, payments are made with cryptocurrencies and deliveries are not made through conventional mail. However, there is a much greater risk that you will not get what you actually wanted.

83 percent of all doping products contained the wrong substances

In recent months, both Wada and a team of Australian scientists have investigated the extent to which the dark web plays a role in the emergence of doping in elite sport. Wada comes to the conclusion that only a fraction of the purchases made on illegal marketplaces on the Darknet are used for doping purposes – at least not in top sport.

Because the flip side of the anonymity of such orders is the health risk. In test purchases by Wada undercover investigators, 83 percent of all products did not contain the declared ingredients or at least a significantly different concentration. Finally, Wada believes that top athletes do not want to take such a risk.

The quintessence of the Australian researchers is not so clear. They find that doping hunters still know little about the range and size of purchases on the dark web and about the purchasing practices of fraudsters. You write about an “exacerbation of the doping problem” through Darknet sales.

Apparently no one on the dark web has asthma

In addition to anabolic substances, growth hormones, EPO, metabolic modulators and laxatives are also offered. This with high availability and very low costs. Only for so-called Beat-2 agonists – asthma drugs to increase lung capacity such as salbutamol or clenbuterol – there seems to be no demand on the Darknet.

The drugs on offer are specially manufactured for the black market in special underground laboratories. Two thirds of all orders on the dark web are for drugs. In a 2017 study, doping substances were responsible for only 2.9 percent of that. In their research over the past few months, the Australians came across 72 different products that are on Wada’s current banned list.

Known doping products are ordered. Neither Wada’s nor the Australian study found any substances that the doping hunters were not yet aware of.

To better prepare for the increasingly important source of supply “the Internet”, the scientists recommend that anti-doping authorities develop strategies to monitor these activities. To do this, they should work more closely with cybercrime experts.

However, looking at the Darknet remains a snapshot. It’s like a Hydra as a trading platform. No sooner is a marketplace recognized and eliminated by law enforcement than the next two appear. The operators are only found in the rarest of cases. And when they do, the police target worse things than doping misguided athletes.

(aargauerzeitung.ch)