Drugs: Sports’ Prisoner’s Dilemma

The use of performance-enhancing drugs is a major issue in the realm of professional sports. The fact is that drug testing seems to be lagging behind evasion methods. As soon as there is an improvement in drug testing technology, a new undetectable performance-enhancing drug developed and ready for use.

The problem is that the choice of doping is a dominant strategy for professional athletes. Consider the game represented bellow. Athletes 1 and 2 have the choice to either dope (D) or not dope (N). If Athlete 2 dopes then Athlete 1 should also dope in order to compete. If Athlete 2 does not dope then Athlete 1 should still dope in order to gain a competitive advantage. Therefore, it is a dominant strategy for Athlete 1 to dope and the same logic can be applied to Athlete 2. However, both athletes would be better off if neither choose to dope because they would not have an advantage over one another and there would not be the possibility of testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Due to this game athletes continue to use performance enhancing drugs in order to remain competitive.

The way to stop athletes from doping is to store current blood and urine samples for future testing when more advanced drug detection techniques are available. Athletes know what drugs can be detected now and are able to avoid detection. However, athletes do not know what drugs will be detectable in the future. The only choice for athletes would be to avoid all performance-enhancing drugs.