Customs Shares Information About Steroid Users with World Anti-Doping Agency

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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) continues to makes progress in its international lobbying efforts to convince international governments to share information about their country’s respective users of anabolic steroids. WADA has been a driving force behind the criminalization of doping and anabolic steroid possession around the world. It has succeeded, practically unopposed, in expanding the disastrous intenational war on drugs to include anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).

The latest achievement by WADA involves a groundbreaking partnership with the World Customs Organization (WCO). The WCO is the intergovernmental organization that is recognized as “the voice of the global Customs community.” The WCO is best know for maintaining the International Harmonized System goods nomenclature.

The “memorandum of understanding” between WADA and WCO sets a precedent in which the international customs community will share private information about anabolic steroids users with a morally-driven organization. WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya justifies the information-sharing between governments and WADA by suggesting that telling WADA about steroids users leads to the “protection of society.”

It will include cooperation in the collection, storage and exchange of information, the setting up of information sessions and seminars, and cross-organization alerts on trends observed in the areas of anti-doping and the trafficking of doping substances.

The MoU further supports the national and international anti-doping measures  referred to in UNESCO’s ‘International Convention against Doping in Sport’, which to date has been ratified by 159 Member States.

“The WCO is committed to working with its international partners to combat all forms of illicit trade including the trade in illegal, counterfeit and unlicensed pharmaceutical products,” said WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya.

“This MOU will facilitate relations between WADA and the WCO, provide us with a concrete basis for further cooperation, contribute to a healthier and safer international sporting environment, and encourage Customs administrations in meeting one of their core aims, namely, the protection of society,” Mikuriya added.

“This MOU is a significant development for WADA as it will enable the agency to increase intelligence on upstream perpetrators involved in doping activities, the illegal organizations and individuals that provide doping substances to the sporting world,” said WADA Director General David Howman.

The partnership is the latest in a series of agreements that allows WADA to obtain information about steroids users from international government and intergovernmental bodies. WADA adopts the stance that steroid and PED use is immoral and therefore should be criminalized. The willingness of governments to readily disclose information and cooperate with a moral organization is a disturbing trend.

Imagine if the Catholic Church lobbied international government to criminalize infidelity and reached agreement with international police to help track down cheaters and convinced governments to disclose information about individual’s extramarital affairs all in the name of protecting society?